Gazing into my Crystal Ball...

I am assuming this is hinging on if you get x features in by that time? Otherwise it will be pushed again?

I for one would welcome the 1.0 release for single player on my own PC. That alone would amp numbers up. Maybe even keep the disclaimer up but say that there are still many features coming or make it prominent in the menu that the features are coming so people know. Even if you had certain placeholder graphics in that say "Coming Soon" etc. just to ward off crazed people.

Nah, not necessarily. We're kinda at a point where we need to finishing deciding what we can do really, really well now and pushing back a specific mechanic or feature that we can't polish and streamline to the degree that we want to get the game to by our internal release schedule. I wouldn't call it "cut" necessarily, as we'll probably just move our hypothetical feature into the next update.

I like your signage idea. Turning it around in my brain, I have a couple of questions. Does the signage take away from the fact that the current version is great, polished and refined? What if the feature we advertised gets back but another feature takes its place?

I do not think it will take away from the polished-ness of the game. It would just serve to stop a massive outcry from people saying "OH but you promised me x feature at release! WAAA" as they would see this and assume it would be coming, which will be especially helpful for people who do not read the forums/reddit/steam etc.

To me, it would almost be a hype builder. "Oh gas giants are coming" awesome, let's get excited. Obviously it can't be overused as that will make it look unrefined, but for core features that would be a win I think.

On the chance a feature gets cut/changed then you could maybe put a post up on the news feed in the game. I do not think this should be used for insignificant features, but only big rock type things where they are definitely coming as even if they were changed they will still be similar to what was originally stated.

This is another thought - like the Galactic War video maybe a video that plays that shows what the big next thing coming up is to show people what is coming. Thereby stopping a riot. There should definitely be some kind of video telling everyone at release what is still to come that everyone watches when the game starts to keep the hate to a minimum.

One game that does this type of thing quite well is Awesomenauts. A significant portion of the main title screen is devoted to 'the Vault' which details upcoming features and additions to the game.

There must be a stage in creating new features when they can be hinted at with fairly good certainty, no? Like the features that get added to the PTE?
So you could be specific about upcoming features that are nearing completion, maybe put up a relevant graphic and blurb for 'upcoming features' or something along those lines somewhere in the main menu (maybe another tab in the right hand banner), and list other planned features below somewhere. Listing them as "upcoming features" would not take away from the game's polish, I don't think.

What I really think would help is a comprehensive list of what we can or cannot expect. It doesn't have to be perfect, or glowing, it just needs to be honest, and kept up to date. Seeing an honest evaluation of what I have to look forwards to does more to increase my confidence in this project then all the hype in the world. I have tried to think of as many different ways as possible of categorising a feature's future developmental status. So far, I have come up with 10 categories. Please note the following list should not be read as an example of where I think things are at in terms of developmental readiness. It's just my best guess.

1. Stuff that we are completely happy with, and will not be revisiting unless something else borks it up for some reason.
e.g. Projectile physics.
2. Stuff that forms part of our minimum shippable product. We would not release the game without having these features in.
e.g. Stability improvements.
3. Stuff that we want to work on before release and we are optimistic about getting it in. If it doesn't make it, see category 5.
e.g. Asteroid belts.
4. Stuff we want to work on before release, but we are not optimistic about getting it in. If it doesn't make it, see category 5.
e.g. Unit cannon
5. Stuff that will not be in for release, but is a short-medium term priority to get in post release.
e.g. A mod marketplace.
6. Stuff that will not be in for release, and is a medium to long term priority to get in post release.
e.g. Gas giants.
7. Stuff that will not be in for release, or is a goal for us, but we think the modding community could handle, and we will provide tools for them to look at using in the long term.
e.g. a manual planet creator.
8. Stuff that we think sounds cool, and we will play it by ear if it looks feasible at some point in the future.
e.g. Space elevators.
9. Stuff that we think would be cool to do, but is a lot of effort, and we think it would probably have to justify it's existence by being sold as an add-on.
e.g. Other factions.
10. Stuff that is just beyond the scope of this game. It would be an unreasonable amount of effort, or just wouldn't fit with what PA is about. We will not be implementing it, nor going out of our way to allow modders to do it.
e.g. Commander dating simulator.

If uber were to fill out such a list, it wouldn't necessarily need to have all of these included. The last one in particular would be a theoretically infinite list, and would perhaps best be reserved for commonly requested features. However creating some sort of roadmap like this would cut all the nasty criticism in half. It would put everyone's cards on the table, and give everyone an honest evaluation of what to expect. Even if it gets changed when something slips, as long as it is kept up to date, then that honesty would be far more refreshing than any amount of marketing. Bonus points if it gets integrated into the game menus so people don't have to come here to know what they have to look forwards to.

ALL the bonus points if at some point in the future (almost certainly post release), Uber is able to start engaging the community directly and asking, "we could be working on X, Y, or Z. What do you think should be the biggest priority?".

After all, I think it's only reasonable that a game that wants to be the next generation of RTS games should also want to have the next generation of community interaction.

Hinting at something, are we?

I'll have you know I met my wife with a commander dating simulator!

Not really anything in particular. Are you?

That depends on uber's stance on shields and mega-units, I guess.

Those two ideas are incredibly broad features. In the vast number of different ways they could be implemented, I'm sure that there is at least one that would leave almost everyone happy. As a result, I have no strong feelings towards those two features, one way or the other. I would probably put them somewhere in categories 6-9 personally, but it really doesn't matter too much.

Anyhow, let us not seek to derail this thread with needles hot-button topics.

I'm just going to place this here:
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/confirmed-features-list-2-0.44950/

Also it's worth mentioning that Yes, if it's not kept up to date it will quickly go out of date, but that's the catch, the community is, for the most part, very accepting of reasonable explanations and can understand even if they disagree with a choice/decision so long as you treat them fairly and do what you can to explain the circumstances. As a community we might not be on Uber's level, but I think we need to be given more credit than what we've been given so far because when things have been explained(admittedly it's always had to been explained "after the fact" so far) to us things have gone over really well.

Mike

I'd like to know when Knight joined Uber and how long has he been working there.

I don't think you have to work at uber to compile a list of features confirmed by the devs. But hey...

Devs don't tell us everything. This point is made the original post.

Can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not but KNight never started working for Uber. It is just based off of dev comments. From The Useful Thread Sticky Compilation:

Edit: ninja'd

But it is a start.

I'd love to make a list like this. It's been a much-requested feature on the forums for a while now, especially since we cleared beta.

There are a couple of reasons why we haven't or have a hard time making lists. Generally speaking, we don't work in a precisely itemized way. We're not banging out mechanics or features sequentially, in other words. Granted, that's not what your list is about, but I've seen a couple that want us to list everything on the agenda as we progress. At the rate we make decisions, it'd just be too crazy to keep up with. I was talking to Forest the other day and he said something to the effect of "we make >200 decisions a day as a 30-man team." Most of these are small decisions, but they have rippling effects, too.

This list in particular is much more agreeable with the way we work. There's definitely a short list of things we know we need to improve, cool stuff we want to get into 1.0, and so on.

The thing I always worry about, though, is accidentally over-promising. That can have an enormously nasty effect on community morale. For example, when beta hit way back when, we felt pretty sure the Unit Cannon would make it in one of that phases' subsequent updates. The confidence in that drained as we examined the feature, figured out what it would take to get done well, and factored that into our production timeline. In the end (and it took a few months to get that far), when we said for sure it wouldn't make it, people reacted a little drastically.

We can look at that response in a couple of ways. (And please don't get me wrong, we all wanted that feature to stay high-priority and understand why it's lower-priority status would bum people out.) But, more importantly, I think the thing we learned was to make 100-percent sure the seemingly imminent game features we want to talk about are totally, 100-percent going to happen before chatting about them.

Priorities change all the time, too. We're pretty fluid depending on what the game needs or what we need to finish because it might block something else.

That said, I think we can figure out a way to put better information out for you guys, it may just not be a list. Any ideas? Maybe mini-essays or Q&As -- something that isn't so formal and seemingly binding?

The less formal and binding the better. I really enjoyed the weekly update thing you were doing for a while. I think that that would be a good way to put out information in a nice manner, though it could turn out to be too formal.