PA is on Sale!

It's still skirmish mode though, so that sounds like a proper single player mode to me.

I have nothing more to add to what I already said but I'll just say that I'm very dominantly a singleplayer focused player since play games to relax; so my expectations of a singleplayer mode are probably a lot more nit picky than yours. Just as say a PC focused player has some nit picky expectations when looking a console port.

Looking at it that way is fine if you are buying a game that has been released, but PA is just as much in testing as it was back in alpha. We all basically bought this game on nothing more than a promise, so I don't know that you can take such a pessimistic view on early access games and still be willing to buy them.

But what you said has nothing to do with the word "proper".

I got it post kickstarter in the beta phase when it was more polished; specifically because I liked what it had already. Of course I mean no disrespect with that, I have bouth some games on nothing but a prayer, and don't regret my decision of doing so; but even games I've got with little more then an idea I specifically backed because of the one central idea to theme, not because of promises they made around it.

Let's just say gambling on software promises are a fairly costly error; especially if we're talking implementation details.

Guess what.

The game isn't finished.

You can have multiple AIs as well as difficulties. AI personalities are on the way and are going to be awesome.

AI personalities seem to already exist - their "personality" is mainly defined by what order they build units in.

They are very weak personalities compared to what we'll have in the future.

True. But it does define how the AI plays the game.

More cohesive AI personalities will affect how they use those units I guess.

Currently however, the AI personality that builds air factory first is very weak. AI personality that builds land factories first is stronger.

And then there are two AI personalities after the AI reaches t2 - one keeps attacking with lots and lots of units, the other starts rushing nukes.

I think while the independent AI personalities will become more strongly defined, it will be quite hard for the end user to discern between them ahead of time.

Especially as you would hope that the AI sub-personality that builds bombers ahead of fighters will respond to me building fighters and change his personality to suit.


Are we talking about the same sort of personalities?

That's actually an issue with the balance of the game; the information system in the game (ie. scouting, tech information, information you can discern from unit composition or buildings, information you can discern from eco) is quite frankly dysfunctional, to put it mildly. Though truth be told, I never had too many expectations of it to begin with, for this game.

Proper single player skirmish mode shouldn't require an online connection, would allow you to pause, save and load, at the very, very least.

The current iteration is just an online multiplayer mode that you happen to play vs AI only.

Also, to me, currently the game is quite hard to play, as the sim slows to a crawl and updates 2 frames/minute. Not sure if this is due to the server itself, or a bad connection to it. But yet again. Online lag is not something included in "proper" single player either.

Of course I trust that the above functionality will be implemented by release, but to a certain degree I have to agree with Nightbasilisk on this one mate.

To be fair, they only published very minor UI improvements for now, and still working on a lot of core functionality, such as graphics, balancing, units, AI behavior and such.

We might not know what's going on behind the scenes, for example I'm sure I read somewhere that they have a working galactic war version already, so it's fair to assume someone is working on the UI as well.

How is it an issue with any of that?

If you get an AI personality that relies on bombers to attack you and will constantly harass you with air units, while putting a lighter emphasis on land units, and you can tell that it is that personality, you're going to respond by hitting it hard with land units and throwing some anti-air and fighters into the mix.

At that point, the personality has to adapt. Because otherwise, it will lose.

That was the point of my post. We may have an AI personality that favours an aggressive air-game. And that AI is wholly negated by spamming AA.

Proper skirmish mode is player Vs. AI. That's it. You're talking about features you want, but they have nothing to do with whether it's skirmish or not.

It might be skirmish, but it is not proper. Proper implying that it lives up to certain standards. Which it doesn't.

Standards which you've made up and are therefore meaningless.

no they don't, they won't play a console port unless they had no choice, xept they wanted game and the shoddy port was what they had.

the single player are in the best ways improved from red alert. 2, which I still play to this day for general entertainment. In comparison, zero-k has no singleplayer? So this game can't possibly be terrible singleplayer as fresh and challenging it is between matches.

it will get even better with server release playing offline, and with galactic war or whatever series of skirmishes one will see.

one expects chronocam to allow pause of game that pauses sim. One also expects chronocam point to act as save from any point viewed and started in sim from. One expects offline. Therefore, why do you think singleplayer will be no worthy?

fyi, doesn't starcraft 2 have two whole campaigns, soon 3, and is online dependent? Its a failure in your eyes, it has no skirmish meeting your standards, starcraft 2 is a crappy game, everyone hear that?

You did not play, let's say, every RTS ever released?

standards which are industry standards. Singleplayer is not multiplayer. And you originally quoted him talking about singleplayer.

Notice the words you are responding to?

Singleplayer means singleplayer. Singleplayer means only input from one player is expected. So yes, a singleplayer game ought to be playable without internet (it doesn't need internet - only one player is playing), and if the session is interrupted (because of something else going on, e.g. baby crying), you should be able to pause the game and deal with those matters. A joy of singleplayer, particularly in strategy games, is to be able to play for only an hour a day and still have a 30 hour game.

Three things.

1) He wasn't quoted in the future tense. He was quoted in the present tense. PA has yet to implement those features which will make it good.
2) The Chronocam is buggy, so while it may work in an ideal world, it still has to be proven.
3) Explain this quote:

from this article: http://www.vg247.com/2011/09/08/the-day-i-realised-always-on-drm-moaners-have-a-point/

Best quote of that article?

This is a pointless debate.

Singleplayer games are designed for one user to input commands. There is no reason for the game to be online. A proper singleplayer game is one that can be played without anything in the outside world affecting the players enjoyment of the game.

You can generate your own electricity, you cannot generate your own internet.

That's a convention, which likewise has nothing to do with standards or properness. So dealing with it as a convention:

Requires online connection

This isn't going to happen at release, this is a known thing. Most early access RTSs that I'm aware of didn't have skirmish at all, so I'd say we're ahead of the curve here.

Pause

I agree it should exist, and this has been brought up elsewhere, but this has nothing to do with whether a skirmish mode is being offered.

Save and load

This is a convention in skirmish? I don't recall a single Relic or Blizzard RTS allowing this for example.

Multiplayer mode vs. AI is precisely what skirmish is. The online element is irrelevant. you might want it to be offline, but tough noogies, it has nothing to do with whether it's skirmish or not. The TBS Massive Assault for example had an online requirement for skirmish.