PA matches fun to watch?

This kinda ties in with ways to expose PA more to the general audience making it more popular
but considering the current gameplay and content i wonder how appealing PA matches realy are to watch
another thing is that over the last couple months there seem to be less and less PAvideos on youtube

do you think PA offers enough to make for generaly entertaining matches both to play and watch or do you think it is heavily lacking for spectating matches

discuss away!



so personaly what i am thinking is PA is lacking some more intresting play and units/unitballance that allows for more intresting play .. stuff that is REALY FUN and intresting to watch

how many people use unitdrops or t2 combatfabbers for turretcreep? how many use to build firebases?
could the game realy benefit from stealthgenerators to allow for more sneeky/cheesy play?
yes the game is primarily about large army engagements but those allone simply are basic and become fairly repetitive quickly and feel often anticlimatic, that is not to say there aren´t units for cheeky play boombots are a prime example anchor and ssx play can also catch an opponent by suprise ... but you don´t simply see this type of sudden tense suprise play so often ...

that is what i am missing at the moment ... WE NEED MORE FUN VIDEOS/MATCHES !!!
i want some cheese on my bacon! with a bit of salt ... and pepper!

what do you think?

Needz moar varietyz

Don't have that much time to spend games at moment, but I still watch streams at my free time. PA is quite good game to watch compared to many other RTS, but it's have old issue of all games with strategic zoom: icon wars aren't fun to watch.

If you play PA a lot and understand what's going on it's not that big problem, but to bring general audience into the game it's should also looks cool and "red group of icons go over blue group of icons" won't make people want to play the game.

We've been tagging our videos with match of the tournament, and showcase match, but i havent gotten around to making a way of showing that yet

Generally I like watching PA streams.
But it usually depends on the streamer and format.
Best POV Streamer atm is twitch.tv/mrelodea (Great at game / Funny / Interesting)
POV streamers should learn their audience new tricks and this is something elodea does nicely.

Streams where people comment matches are hard. And is best done in duo's if you don't have 2 people commenting a PA match, well you lose out.
Great combinations are people like Quitch/WrongCat and ZaphodX/Marshall.
You also need to go closeup in confrontations while commenting so you are not always looking at icon wars. It is also the casters job to convey what's going on in an easy to understand way. The more you act like a football/soccer commentator the better you are doing I feel. Explaining Strategies, what would I do, predictions make it all fun.

Also consistency is good, like twitch.tv/VioletAnia and twitch.tv/g0hst_reaper are doing streaming almost daily. But ffs remove the pinguins gh0st

that is pretty vague
what variety are you exactly speaking of ?
what i am talking about are specialist/special role units that don't need to be amassed to be effective ... say boombotnuke ... deciever or stuff like that ...

I feel PA games need more orbital play, since that is a big part of the game. It is however, also the most boring part of the game right now. Though then again, I may be SLIGHTLY biased...

i don´t disagree that orbital needs work but then for me that is rather with logistics: bigger transports, carriers orbital teleporters than say more starwarsy/star treky battles ... even then that might be incentive enough to put more thought into orbital play ...

my problem is that if you include too many/strong or effective orbital units/ships orbital may turn into what is the same issue with SupCom´s t3 and experimantal phase ... it just becomes a techrush ... admittedly though depending on playtime you may wanna end the game sooner or later anyway ... sooo yea ... (maybe add crossplanetary artillery/missileswarm artillery ?)


thing is yea multiplanetplay IS the meat of the game as such orbital needs to support that well ...

We need more than 3 units that can attack ground -> ground and one mobile unit (dox don't really count) that attack air -> air.

We need moar viable units.

In fact, we just need moar unitz.

which unit/s do you not consider viable at the moment ?...

seriously regarding GvG i would say just add hovercrafts+factory
as for AA bot? i would say t2 flak bot ... and yea make t2 facs a bit cheaper it doesn´t need to be too cheap
dox would count if it were a bit more effective .. i am against a dedicated t1 aa bot when we have already a decent t1 aa vehicle ...

The whole of T2 air.

Levelers; they're simply usually not the best choice.

Vanguards. When was the last time you even saw one in a 1v1?

Bluehawks aka Snipers but slightly different with less range meaning that they are never used.

Skitters; you only build them in very niche situations.

Combat fabs in combat; you never see them for anything other than mines.

Stingers; you never see these anymore because it apparently increased variety. @tvinita Could we PLEASE have this rectified kthnxbai

Re: Orbital units... We need more of them. It's the game's big selling point. Or one of them. But there's only two orbital to orbital combat units- the anchor and the dogfighter- forget the name.

I don't know what I'd exactly put in, but a carrier of some description sounds cool.

More units in general can't hurt either.

No we need less Orbital the sole purpose of Orbital should be for gaining intel and moving troops to gain an advantage in the ground layer. Orbital combat does nothing but make turtling easy and invasions hard. The focus of the game needs to be on the ground; PA isn't homeworld we shouldn't try to shoehorn some epic orbital fights into a game that's the spiritual successor to ground based real time strategy games. PA is about managing ground wars over a planetary system. Orbital combat distracts from this focus.

stingers to me are not variety ... they would be just a replica on legs instead of treads
vanguards in a 1v1? ... yea we would be able to see EVERY t2 unit when T2 were to be more accessible it can't be too cheap though
as i mentioned before ...

Stingers don't have to be clones.

Spinners are rapid-fire missiles. Imagine making them use the ammo system so that they fire in a volley, and then giving the stinger a slower firing missile weapon that offers better continuous DPS? Just an idea (that was totally not taken from any balance mods made by members of the realm community).

How would adding more combat units to orbital help with absurd tanking? I mean, we already do have a problem with that (ANCHORS FOR DAYS), but I was thinking orbital units that would help create a beachhead, busting through the anchors and whatnot.

I can understand where you're coming from, but the name of the game is PLANETARY annihilation. It's set in a solar system. There will be space.

That being said, if you just wanna add support units to AUGMENT ground battles, that'd be cool too. Just to make it clear, I don't mean that someone should be able to sail to victory on orbital alone, but allowing it to be a vital part of a fighting for would be cool.

It's PLANETARY annihilation.

The focus is on the planets, not in space.

Problems with orbital:
1. Orbital fabbers.
2. Umbrellas
3. Anchors

Not to be an ***, but could you please answer what I was saying in my post?

As for the Planet thing, I think we're just gonna agree to disagree here. We have different ideas about what route this game should take, and that's okay.

As for what you said...

Anchors, I can understand the ire there. No arguments there.
Orbital fabbers- I don't see what the problem is here. You need them to build the stuff in space, and there's more than just anchors in that list. Not much, mind you, but still.

Umbrellas- Unless this is a complaint about how the seriously need help, which I would get, I'm not sure what the problem with umbrellas is.

I admit I might not be addressing your arguments accurately, but I have no idea what they are.

Problem with Orbital Fabbers is that they add a layer of orbital combat to the game that doesn't need to be there. Having a single combat unit (I'd rather it be suicide than shooting, but whatevs) that can kill satellites is fine but having orbital fabbers and orbital bases that need killing is bad.

The problem with Umbrellas is that they shift the focus of invasions to the orbital layer (Shoot the stuff in the orbit) rather than the ground/air. Orbital should be self-contained; the only things that have to do with both orbital and ground/air are the astreaus and the orbital launcher; nothing else should exist to cause direct interaction between the two. Radar sats can view the ground but that's not direct interaction.

Not sure if sarcastic...