Gazing into my Crystal Ball...

I remember you mentioning a "list of features needed before release".

Indeed.

Maybe since we're so close to release we could get a peek at that list?

The way I see this is in a way we have paid for the privilege to be part of the development team, and a very small part at that. And for myself it has been a privilege.
Yes there's stuff we all want to see, or even expected to see. But in case everyone has forgotten, the games not finished. It's like we bribed santa to have a look at what we're getting for Christmas, then moan at him while he tries to put it together. Let's give them a chance, eh?
I can only imagine what it must be like for a small development team to put his game together, every day having to balance the decisions between financial, technical, and artistic side of the game.
And Uber, we know this is your baby, and perhaps we are a little bit like over protective uncles and aunts, who keep trying to stick their noses in.... Just remember we do love ya

Just to be clear my rant isn't about MadSci. I love MadSci and think he's pretty great.

But I disagree with your premise that more communication = better. In fact every indication is that the less we say the better.

Everything is still in the cards because we are going to continue to work on the game. This is the part I need to keep hammering on. 1.0 release is not the end game, not by a country mile.

Bottom line is we intend to keep updating the game as long as there is demand for it (and demand is measured in dollars btw).

I think this would be a tremendous mistake. What's on the list changes constantly. If it's one thing the community cannot deal with it's changing plans.

What the community cannot deal with is not change of plans in and of itself, but rather not knowing of the possibility of this particular change until long after it has happened.

what @YourLocalMadSci points out well, though, is that the community is misunderstood in that it finds less useful to constantly recite praise when it is mutually known by every community member and that everyone can intuitively know that their time and knowledge of the game, it's state and it's quirks could be employed letting the devs know. And it may look like members find nothing but criticism or negative things to say about the game, when in truth, if you take a step out of the UBER forum, you realize how much of a positivity nest it is on average and that those same members, when outside of the UBER forums fight tooth and nails to protect and defend PA.

so it's really, REALLY not the way it seems.

And you need this feedback. you NEED it.

I thought you were wiser then this, i really do. Especially with all the shitstorms flying around, like i said before these things exist because you leave gaps in what you communicate, so that indication is wrong imho,

As long as you tell us up front about what changes you'll make, we'll be all for it.

When you guys make decisions that could really impact the community (Able commander for example) you've been making them without asking everyone what they think. You just kinda' throw it in and wonder what'll happen afterwards... it often seems really bad sadly...

If you told us what you had planned, everyone would be on board for a commander like the Able, we could tell you which commander we thought would be best to use, if you agreed and came back later like "Sorry.. We can't actually use that because of X" rather than waiting until it's finished and being like "Here you go! The commander, oh but it's different than expected because of X" then we'd feel like we actually mattered, it'd be really nice to see some more interaction. We love receiving information and if it's bad news it's so much better to tell us up front than wait and try to sneak by, y'know?

It's like how telling your parents when you were younger that you broke their favorite pot than trying to hide and act like nothing happen, and wait for them to find out... If you told up front you'd get punished so much less harshly than if you tried to hide it!

I'm saying this as one of the people who didn't care about the Able, and as someone really wanting to help you guys out and trying to get this game through. Hope it helps in some way at swaying your opinion on community/dev interaction. Thanks!

Weeelp. Looks like Brad's schedule just cleared.

Thank you for making my point for me. You do get why this is impossible right?

Schedule I suppose?

Ok, so your premise is that more communication is always better? Taking that to it's extreme is just as dumb as no communication.

It's a balancing act and we are constantly changing what/how/when we communicate. It wasn't a statement that we are going to stop talking to you guys.

How can we tell you in advance of something we are going to do unless we've already done it? If it's not done then it's nothing but speculation. When we speculate too much people freak out when the result isn't identical to the speculation. For example I think we've come really close to the vision for the game in the original video and surpassed it in many ways. Yet people still complain about little tiny videos that aren't the same as the decisions made in the first 90 days of development making a visualization video. What. The. Hell.

So for example I could give you a date for X feature. But that's an estimate. Things could change due to someone getting sick, or the feature was harder than expected, or something else popped up with higher priority (fixing a bug in the live game), or we had an equipment failure or it was just a bad idea that doesn't work in the game. We can't tell you the result before we do the work. So the idea that we would tell you what we are going to change before we change it doesn't make any sense at all. It's physically impossible without a delorean and a flux capacitor.

I've made this point many many times but you guys do realize we build games incrementally ,right? And we have to, on a daily basis, make decisions and tradeoffs, right? Making a game like this is a massive R&D project that is also trying to ship consumer stuff at the same time.

I wonder how people would react if they were shown of things "to expect" and that list would change on a daily basis.

I'd start a betting ring.

I know, sorry, just trying to help.

What I'm trying to say is think of it like this.. If you gave me a release date for a feature, it's a speculation obviously, if you guys run into a bump in the road before that date and don't think you can get it done by then... Say so, right then and there! As apposed to waiting until the day it's supposed to come out and say "Welp, sorry, it's not finished.." Or even worse, say so AFTER.

When this project started I thoight it was amazing that people would get to see how games are made up close and finally get to understand what game development actually is. I think some people kind of missed that lesson somewhere along the way.

This is true.
Well I await 1.0 with bated breath

I can understand completely the changes of dates and all that, I'm one of the hard core supporters of Uber! I've worked on simple games/mods/things and know how much things change from your original idea to the end result. A lot of others sadly don't get how it works :S