Offline mode

Better?

I think people's concerns, complaints and rage would be allayed if Uber said "We're working on it." And stickied a Thread to that effect in this Forum and the Steam Forum.

I don't like the amount of flak the game's getting because of this issue.

amen to that.

The developers have probably been sleeping all weekend. Oh, and they've already said they're working on it.

Don't paraphrase me and then state the obvious to a partial quote please. I was suggesting they sticky it in the two Forums so that all these frustrated people who come in on one-offs looking for help or reassurance can get it, without us having flame threads constantly.

I'm happy and certain the Devs are having a well earned break..

Yeh, but part of me thinks they should have at least kept one eye on it in the first weekend, just to make sure nothing funny was going on. Like a total clusterf**k of negative publicity, for example. I'm about done trying to convince Steam people, and don't know enough about running a business to tackle some of their points.

While I understand everyones frustrations, I too am one of those people, but this was always going to be a really really big issue right when they announced their release date. They must have expected this sort of blowback and to be honest, to the people that are tried of the offline stuff, well, you knew it was coming it shouldn't be such a shock to you this was absolutely OBVIOUS this was going to happen. The game simply has been released just a tad too early. The game itself is good, but there are still balancing issues, performance issues, graphical issues on top of the features list that needs some serious work still....

I don't see massive balance, performance, or graphical issues. Most "bugs" are game crashing due to not having required installed drivers/dependencies.

I also don't see how "we are going to nuke your game if you release it without offline, so here is release and no offline so here I am to nuke your game" is an arguement.

I mean, when I was 14, I told my brother if he turned on the bedroom light while I was trying to sleep, I would bust it out with a baseball bat. He did, and so I did. But looking back, it wasn't necesary and was just a form of malice.

This game bothers people so they want to bust it out with a baseball bat. Can't say you didn't warn us, but I do argue it isn't a reasonable response. I can admit it becomes more reasonable over time, but come back later in November and I can start cutting more slack for this, not all but more...

When I talk about perofrmance, a lot of people are still getting mass amounts of lag still, game doesn't support sli or x-fire, though not really needed as its CPU heavy but just as an example, a game today should defo support sli, most likely a amd/nvidia driver thing rather then Ubers, but still. Balancing issues are all over the place, from boom bot to the catalysts being FAR too over powered, then need firing timers, being able to fire it off instantly is just OP. You should at least have a 5-10 minute delay between shots.

When it comes to graphical issues, the lava is still absolutely terrible no bloom or lighting effects, acts like sea instead of actual lava pits, and the colour is completely off. Nothing like whats shown in the launch trailer, embrassingly off when you compare it to the concept images and kickstarter, no clifts, no planet variations at all in what seems like nearly 50,000 different seeds, no height elevation on the terrain what so ever. From alpha we ACTUALLY had canyons! that looked stunning! now we have a mess of boulders....

edit: oh and the oceans haven't been touched since Alpha.

Paha, PA, CPU heavy? That's ridiculous

It's RAM heavy, PA barely utilizes my CPU, and it's not even a good CPU, just average.

well your CPU has to take care of 5k units per team at the very least.. RAM doesn't handle that

Because I'm not a fan of repetition:

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/pa-single-player-still-uses-servers.60383/#post-994715

Hope that can allay at least some of the concern over offline mode.

I really need to try and merge some of these threads. Oh boy...

This.

SLI is, by a technical explainable fact and not opinion, not an investment. Getting it to work, would not benefit performance at all. It would run the same. With and without sli, side by side, no other changes, same machine, would show same fps and rates, at same points of the game.

Boom bots and dox and catalysts don't win tournaments. They didn't when buffed. They don't now. Catalysts are too expensive and immobile so sitting targets. Means a snipe is a guranteed investment, you spend 10k for that snipe unit, and it cannot be stopped, it is an absolute purchase to remove the catalyst. The Catalysts are just an "endgame beacon" from C&C Renegade; An endgame condition. Really, if a player builds 5 catalysts, the game should just say "X Team Wins" like you drew Exodia from YuGiOh.

Lava acting like water is a start. It does glow mind you. The terrain got changed a lot to reflect performance over visuals, what can and can't path, that can always be improved as time progresses.

Oceans have been touched since alpha, Squishy tells me ALL THE TIME how he plays with moving water files to try to get the beautiful water from alpha. That is "negative", but it has changed nonetheless proving that statement is completely unbased. Technically, the change is "non-physics simulated tides" and "clearwater", aestetic and gameplay. Blue water only works if it doesn't conceal units, in this game it does.

All of those, are opinion, and if you say they could make it better, then you are arguing that Ubisoft should NEVER have made assassin's creed 1 or 2 or 3. They should have ONLY made Brotherhood and Black Flag. Those were the "same game engine with the best improvements" sequels. ANYTHING can be improved with time, but this is the first installment of it's kind and with the update support it continues to have it will obviously build from here. The point is, "release" has to come somewhere. A lot has been done already to keep putting it off.

Also, this. Minecraft servers required IP to send out to connect. (not matchmaking btw, imagine that, a game without matchmaking, oh boy. /sarcasm. no matchmaking is fine) From what he says, PA servers require literally giving both sides the whole damn settings for each piece. If you need to type ipconfig /all and write down and manually enter the numbers on several different machines, then it's not ready. If you have to emulate playfab authentication by entering an expected code, it's not ready. They do need time to make the file something a user can launch.

Maybe they should release the servers though. Just to linux. Because the linux people would at least know how to run it despite intricate complexity.

At the very least, it sounds like model importing to the game, and server launching, are equally complicated.

ok well on the water :



that is the alpha water.... and here is the release water :



If you are seriously, telling me that they are different? you are deluding yourself something chronic!!! Here is another picture of the alpha water and you can do your own comparrisons in your game and see it.

http://www.thesixthaxis.com/2014/01/15/planetary-annihilation-preview/


As for the balance stuff you mentioned, I never once said they were instant wins and I couldn't care less about tournaments. The fact is the catalyst needs some balancing, any knuckle head can tell you that, even people who I would called "expert players" have also suggested this. It is the I-win button really and if you don't think it is you're also fooling yourself over that fact. Yes you can counter it, not very easily and I don't care that its an I-win button either, it should be, but it just needs some balancing. Units are units and always gonna be someone that isn't happy with them but doesn't changed the fact that a lot of people still feel their not at their sweet spot for release yet.

The lava is just something I've been extremely vocal on since Beta and I'll continue to be untill it gets the due diligence and attention it deserves. Understand sacrificing some visuals for pathing, but Uber haven't officially come right out and actually said this was the case. The Biome 2.0 is an excellent thread that has been going on for months now which if you haven't, take a read, some very good stuff in there. Yes of course all this is my opinion, I spent $70 on a game because I strongly believe in this game, I believe this can be simply the best RTS game we've had in over a decade, I'm going to be very passionate about it and I by no means attend to offend anyone, least of all UBer who have been just simply awesome all through the process, but there is going to be things that are going to tick a few ppl off, for some its offline mode, for me, it was the visuals because the gameplay was perfect as early as late alpha to me and took out a LOT of stuff.

You are right, the lava does have, and I'll say this loosely "some glow" to it now, but it has no lighting on it, there is no HDR or Bloom to really give it the quality visual it deserves.



this is how it should look... and its a FAR cry away from that... not even as close to 10% of that. You see how the bloom is and how the coloring is NOT orange? how the raised terrain is? if lava becomes an ocean like it is currently in game, realisticly, there is nothing stopping the lava from flowing, never lone the fact that it doesn't even look like lava to me. I wasn't arguing that they can make it better, they've had all this in before in alpha, there have been countless thread on this already, they decided to take it out for the current look we have. Which is, by far, early access graphic fidelity.

No there was some very pretty water in the past, it may have been beta, late alpha. Basically the water was more transparent, and so the terrain underneath it that was closer to the surface was brighter than terrain further down and the water had a very sparkling texture.

Basically the water reminded me of beautiful sparkling water of the bahamas whilst now it makes me think of a can of cyan paint.

I did not see that squishy. But the game right now doesn't have that so.

did Uber really think that releasing the game to coincide with PAX would really help them? bah, they might have gotten about 1,000 at PAX to get PA but now we have 10,000 people not buying PA because there is no Offline-Mode and to lesser extents, saving, optimization and naval play (bots are better at navy then the navy is lol)

Also.. lava did look like that in the past, but of course, the dreaded patching issues.

PA is one of the top sellers on Steam actually, and most reviews are positive.

Indeed, but it could be TOP seller and the steam forums wouldnt be filled with so much crap about the DRM-issues, who knows, but its still depressing that Uber updates where much bigger in Beta then the Launch. Just wait til the mainstream reviews start piling in (or like Totalbiscuits WTF series)