Offline Play Is Coming October 9

Discussion in 'Planetary Annihilation General Discussion' started by BradNicholson, October 7, 2014.

  1. mymothersmeatloaf

    mymothersmeatloaf Member

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    On the contrary actually. I'm really excited for the new update, actually to the point where I'm going to schedule an event with my community to play it when it comes out. But I also do realize that there are more things to be done then just this. This doesn't even scratch the surface for what NEEDS to be done for this game.

    And don't even dare tell me the game is balanced when a gigantic metal planet laser of doom that destroys planets in one hit and has no cool down is more expensive and practical then ******* nukes.

    All I'm saying is, before people start getting excited and start opting into this new game, we should wait to see if they deliver on the rest of the promised content.
    bradaz85 and cmdandy like this.
  2. Geers

    Geers Post Master General

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    So the planet of doom should be cheaper than nukes?
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  3. mymothersmeatloaf

    mymothersmeatloaf Member

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    less expensive and practical** my bad, playing arma 3 and trying to type that at the same time.
  4. squishypon3

    squishypon3 Post Master General

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    Never said it was balanced, personally I play the balance I made ;)

    And alright, though you really didn't seem excited when it was first announced, sorry if I assumed incorrectly.

    Just get preeeetty tired of hearing so much anger at Uber, especially when something good happens.
    FSN1977 likes this.
  5. Pawz

    Pawz Active Member

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    Honestly, I'm getting the feel that Uber is (slowly) starting to pull itself together again.

    I don't know what caused it, but their coms seemed to fall apart after PAX, so it's good to see them get back to their feet.

    At the very least you have to admit that they stuck to 'we aren't going to say until we have a firm date' for this update, even if it was, imho, ill-advised.

    Is the update post targeted at getting us to have faith and back Uber? Probably. We said we would, why on earth would anyone be upset that Uber actually listened?
  6. temeter

    temeter Well-Known Member

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    Wondering if false perception was just the driving force behind that, a scenario communities created themselves. I mean, what did actually change? The ram/pathing /performance improvements as well as the close offline mode make it pretty obvious, that Uber still worked hard on their game.
  7. vackillers

    vackillers Well-Known Member

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    sorry if this has already been asked and answered just really late here to sift through the entire thread, but are we just getting offline mode in the patch on the 9th? or are we getting the servers too? or anything else for that matter?
  8. nofear1299

    nofear1299 Active Member

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    As far as I understand we just going to be able to play offline and lans, we can not host our own servers for anyone to join through the client. Although that is coming soon, and Cola_Colin is going to look at modding it together anyway
    vackillers likes this.
  9. mymothersmeatloaf

    mymothersmeatloaf Member

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    Honestly, people have a right to be angry with uber. They don't necessarily have a great track record of making games.
  10. Raevn

    Raevn Moderator Alumni

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    "They don't necessarily have a great track record of making games" is not a sufficient reason alone. Anger is caused when something negatively affects you, and given your join date, I assume you weren't involved in MNC/SMNC - correct me if I'm wrong on that - so irrespective of your view on what happened there, I don't believe that's the true reason for your anger. Being angry for vague reasons tends to put people offside, as you've seen in this thread, because it has the appearance of being angry for the sake of being angry, which helps no-one. This is further reinforced by the apparent changing of reasons for your anger, when the former ones are refuted.

    Since feeling angry generally sucks, can we try and determine why you feel this way? :)

    Your first posts here on the forums were quite positive - for example, this one. You had a lot of faith in Uber, so something obviously changed. There were a few topics where you talked about preferring a more TA like complexity to the economy for example, but no game is ever going to be 100% how we hope. But you were still pretty optimistic and positive. You then appeared to leave the forums for a bit over half a year, then came back at the announcement of the HR Kickstarter, here. It straight away mentions "I'm not falling for this again".

    Before you left you were confident that Uber would continue on with PA, and not give it up. Why did that change? We can deduce that you feel like HR is a threat to the continued development of PA, but there has been a lot of official feedback about this - more than half the company still working on PA, separate teams, many builds, this offline server announcement, Jeremy Ables coming on board, and more. Trust is hard to win back once lost, but it's even harder or even impossible if you don't know why it was lost.

    You have stated some reasons, but many are based on false information. And maybe this is just a case of there being some misinformation or you not being aware of the truth. For example:
    • The Unit Cannon - this thread seems to indicate you believe that Uber had no way of implementing it from the start. This is not true - there was a model included in the game files from the very beginning (long before the cannon wreckage was added to planets). You also state they are only now realising this, but they informed us many months ago.
    • This thread goes against what you said previously - "I highly doubt you guys will continue to work on the game and give it regular updates, because quite honestly, you all pulled the same crap with monday night combat.". The circumstances between these games are very different. And what actually happened suggests the opposite - that they will continue to support PA, and long after most other companies would have stopped.
    • PA development slowing down, then stopping - here. Both also not true.
    I'm not calling these out to criticise. I'm calling them out because I want to get to the heart of the matter, and determine what is behind this, because you didn't always feel this way. So - what changed in that period you left, and what about recent events has caused you to doubt Uber's word that they will continue to work on PA, despite all the information to the contrary?
    ViolentMind, lokiCML, snierke and 9 others like this.
  11. thetrophysystem

    thetrophysystem Post Master General

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    You see, @raevn is why I am not a dev. Or a Vangaurd for that matter... He actually wants to play customer service with you, and go through the LAST steps, Listen, Apologize, Satisfy, and Thank, which is great when dealing with any disgruntled individual to be honest.

    And I agree with his motion, really if it was and is ever possible to really discuss what is actually the problem, the personal grievance, what can be done to satisfy your personal desire, then please state it. For instance, and don't say this because I am giving you good ammo here, but a lot of people feel PA came off too vanilla with flat landscape and no special cooky units. Is it too watered down for you? If so, have you tried some unit mods?

    At this point, I applaud raevn for considering to actually ask for a personal discussion on the matter, I am too thin on this topic to ever do anything constructive, I am just too busy trying to put up a strong front that they can deliver on PA and HR, but my trust was always that they would in time so I shouldn't attack others that feel differently. (my opinion of SMNC is that they will do something but they can't do the free thing anymore)
  12. mymothersmeatloaf

    mymothersmeatloaf Member

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    I heard monday night combat got abandoned and thought, you know what, it's probably just a separate entity in the company. I thought, this would never happen to the strategy game I've been hyped for all year. Then I saw what they did to Super monday night combat whenever PA was released into alpha/beta. Each game abandoned when it's predecessor developed. Monday night combat was promised to have continued updates after release of super monday night combat, super monday night combat was promised to have continuous updates when PA got released. Now, human resources is out, planetary annihilation isn't even near completion although they rushed it to full release, and now they could give a crap less about PA because they got their moneys worth out of it.

    Planetary annihilation has gained massive popularity, even more so than MNC or SMNC and is held in high regard as being the game that may bring RTS games back to life. So it'd only make sense for them to try and silence the aggravation among the community by releasing this patch. It may sound seem like a conspiracy, but honestly it makes sense, and it's a effective strategy at silencing a consumer by giving the majority of the complaints what they want and leaving the others in the darkness.

    Majority > minority after all.

    and when the majority of the people are happy the minority doesn't matter, therefor they don't have to waste time and resources on the other features and can just move on.

    So with that being said, there are many people out their that wanted the drm lifted, more so than the people that actually want the content that was promised in the kick starter, like the unit cannon, the extensive modding that was supposed to be possible, Asteroid belts, unit drop ships, things like that.

    But no, there will be those people here that'll say things like "X would be terrible to balance. X was just a concept", and that's the problem, me along with others backed the kickstarter because of that trailer and the features listed, they made it out to seem like the game was going to be like the trailer, and it is so far, but there's still much more work to be done and I just highly doubt it will ever get done at this point.

    And it really irritates me when people say "x is getting taken out because y reason" and actually accept that as an excuse because it just goes to show how flipping delusional people are.

    tl;dr Uber needs to get their **** sorted and stop backing down on their promises.
    Last edited: October 8, 2014
  13. cola_colin

    cola_colin Moderator Alumni

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    I recommend you stop being angry and just wait half a year. Future will tell if you were right or not with your visions of doom. I am sure we all would be happy if you are completely wrong. Yourself included :)
    kayonsmit101 likes this.
  14. jables

    jables Uber Employee

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    Last edited: October 8, 2014
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  15. paperthinarmor

    paperthinarmor New Member

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    I don't interject often, because I often feel like I have little of value to add to discussions. But, respectfully, I'm going to disagree with you, cola. In the sense that he should be angry. I'm not--I do want more features and am a bit miffed that there are no subs in the naval layer (but that's for another discussion), but I'm immensely pleased at the progress PA's managed to make thus far, and hopefully will continue to make into the future.

    My point is that if people just shut up and "wait half a year", it's NOT going to happen this way with Uber, but very well could with a AAA dev like EA, the people could just continue to get screwed. To use a common analogy that makes sense to a lot of people, look at our current US political system. The millions of good people "in the middle" who just want to be left alone and get on with their lives got disillusioned with the political crap, and as a result our news, our politics, and a lot of our lives here in the US have been taken over by ideologues on BOTH sides who preach that the world will end if we don't do absolutely everything they say.

    To put that into context here: Is meatloaf overreacting? Maybe a bit. But is he entitled to his opinion based on Uber's track record? Absolutely. Now, personally, I'm satisfied with the game as it is now. Not ecstatic, but satisfied. I also wasn't a kickstarter backer so my expectations are lower. If Uber died today (and God forbid they should!) I would be happy with a game that I could play against the AI. But, on the flip side of that coin, there is *much* they could do to improve PA. Just off the top of my head:

    *Unit Cannon (it was promised and promoted, put it in!)
    *Underwater naval units
    *Bug-testing and crash fixing (only once had a crash and it was when I clearly overloaded my system, but other users are reporting PA-side glitches)
    *Better tools for system creation (I think this might be coming - but analysis of how metal spots effect starting points on a planet
    *Underwater buildings/more emphasis on naval in general - right now it seems to serve little purpose save for saying that we have joint operations

    Like I said, just my two cents. I can see that both sides have a point here. Uber's worked their butts off on PA, and for that they deserve congratulations, not spit-roasting. But on the flip-side, the userbase has felt a bit--jilted at times.

    And that's where @jables comes in! We're looking forward to your post, Jables, and where Uber's headed next!
  16. squishypon3

    squishypon3 Post Master General

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    Implying they backed down on their promises?
  17. cola_colin

    cola_colin Moderator Alumni

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    All I know of US politics is that I have the prejustice that they are even worse than the german ones, but I think I understand your reasoning.
    I am not saying people should generally not getting angry, I am only very specifically talking about this case with uber and pa. Yes PA has issues. The list of stuff PA still needs I have in my head is long as well.
    But Uber has stated many times they are working on it. Getting angry over the illusion they are not won't help with anything if we assume that Uber is not full of liars. I am pretty sure Uber is full of pretty good people and they would not flat out lie to us about working on the game right now.
    Uber is working on the stuff right now and recent news all but makes this even more likely to be the truth. Being angry about speculations this is all an evil scheme to get our money is pointless. Especially since we all already paid for this.
    Don't get angry if you have no proof at all that your anger is valid.
    If a big publisher releases a game that is online only with the explanation "it doesn't work any other way for complex technical reasons" and a modder can fix it with a few hours work THEN you can get angry. You've clearly been lied to. If a game disc you buy already contains DLC you will later be asked to buy THEN you can get anrgy. etc
    Just don't start a big anger campaign until you have proof.
    DalekDan likes this.
  18. mymothersmeatloaf

    mymothersmeatloaf Member

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    It's delusions like this that prove my statement to be true.

    But that's okay, just sit there and let them take your money, I'm sure you'll just make it back again anyway.

    My 180$ on the other hand? Not coming back.
    did you even bother reading the beggining of the post?
  19. Quitch

    Quitch Post Master General

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  20. squishypon3

    squishypon3 Post Master General

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    did you even bother reading the beggining of the post?[/QUOTE]

    Yep, and offline was a promise in the kickstarter by the way. The molding for the game is great, much easier than any game I've really played before, the game has been built for modders. I should know, I'm a modder. :p

    Unit cannon was not a promise... I'd rather not delve into that argument, but it never was. Just like how those little landers in the kickstarter trailer weren't promises, or the commander in the KS being a promise, nor the rockets shooting a moon doing nothing, and etc...

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