Planetary Annihilation Beta for $40! (Today only)

lol but but humble bundle has a unicorn and they want to sell it to everyone for super cheap

Seems that dev's don't respect early backers. Unfortunately, we are being ignored... Thanks, no need to remind me never to preorder anything from Uberent again.

I agree with the concept that if I paid $40 through Kickstarter to support a game and ended up getting access after people who bought the game for $40 on Steam, I would find that upsetting. I was the one who believed in the project enough at the "mythical" stage to pay up front, even though there was no guarantee of delivery. Why are these guys, who did nothing to launch the boat, getting to ride it first?

I don't think the $60 buy-ins can be annoyed by the $40 buy-ins because that's just the nature of games and specials. We've all paid $60 for a game only to see it drop in price next week. But the $40 Kickstarters got stiffed. Extra-so because they couldn't just cancel their Kickstarter and buy-in through Steam. Their $40 was committed long ago.

Plus, personally, I wouldn't mind seeing more players. The listing of games waiting for players and the wait time to round up enough people for a big match could do with a boost.

I think they respect the early backers. You and I just fall into that category of people who missed the kickstarter and got in on the deal late, so we get no respect for some strange reason.

Oh well... let's be positive. At least they made a Linux version for me.

+1

What have you think when buy the game?
That they need you to test game?
For that they got them own team lol, dont you saw on uber livestream that they play!
they need the money.
I have give +100 euros and today i think,wy i have done that when i could have buy for 40 euros!

I’ve been away for a week, and unfortunately this was the first thread upon my return. I hope that was just bad luck on my part, and my sense is that I should pass up any comment here, but as I got farther along in the thread, it struck me as increasingly dissapointing that there was so little official response as the thread continued on.

After the early acknowledgement that the thread was being listened to, would a follow-up have been too high of a bar? I’ll make some totally unfounded (but hopeful) assumptions and suggest something like:
“We empathize, but unfortunately cannot justify escalating this issue for resolution - The folks empowered to authorize meaningful resolution are deeply focused on efforts directly involved in the upcoming game launch, which takes precedent at this time.”
Maybe phrased better; I’m no PR person, clearly.

Silence is rarely interpreted positively, and even as a detached onlooker to this thread (it’s not my purchase tier), I found myself drawn-in and then invested in some of the persuasive and valid opinions that were expressed on both sides of the issue. Folks seemed to work it out themselves eventually, but I credit each of them individually for that.

I have had one interaction with the support crew and they handled my issue excellently, despite being totally unable to resolve my issue. The point being, they made me feel absolutely fine with the lack of an available resolution, by communicating adequately.
Threads like this seem a bit like a ‘group’ support issue, and I can appreciate avoiding the slippery slope of not treating ALL threads like support calls [yikes! no way!], but every once in a while a thread like this seems to stand out. Consider institutionalizing the capability to empower the talents of the customer support team to respond to threads where a clearly impassioned plea of some kind is identified — customer satisfaction issue, such as a perceived pricing or reward inequity, as in this case.


And yah, take ALL OF THIS with the obvious counter-balance of: if there’s resource contention in play, prioritize dev over support, please. As much as we all hate waiting for info, we’d all hate waiting for better gameplay several [hundred(?)] times more.

Beta access in Kickstarter was set at $40 dollars. so if you wanted to buy in, it was after the fact that the game was well funded and the kickstarter ended.

Luie and Abuk007 bought a combat edition at $40 dollars which didn't include beta edition. They could of bought the beta edition for another $20 dollars but choose not to. After roughly... a few months of Alpha game time and 2 months of beta time that they didn't decide to purchase the warfare edition ($60), they see that the price was dropped to $40 dollars for 24hrs.

A bit of a rage happened now since they pre-ordered earlier and didn't get the same price as these new kids.

At the same time, you had the opportunity to join in at beta at anytime. Anytime! Now the complaint is happening on a one-day sale that is past its prime.

Now that it is pretty close to December and the hints in Neutrino's post

It can be assumed that you don't have to wait much longer. and that the retail game or game itself will enter an open beta to those that have purchased the game in a pre-order or so. I know you are interested in playing, but if you had the chance to play earlier why are you bugged about this one day sale stopping you



Some suggestions mentioned to right this wrong

So in effort... you want Uber to let all the people who bought the combat edition ($40) into the beta.... well whats so different from combat edition ($40) and the introductory ($20) dollar backers who backed [all 18270 of them].
They technically got the same thing as the combat edition.

That's one problem with one suggestion, just saying, not going to argue that its wrong or right just what would happen if it did happen.

I backed the game in kickstarter alpha tier not because I wanted to feel superior over others that came later or weren't able/willing to spend as much, but because I wanted to help development. Being able to play the alpha was a bonus, sure, but one that I didn't actually use that much due to time constraints.

Do I feel bad now that others get the game cheaper than me? No. Did I feel bad last time we had that kind of discussion because of Steam sales? No. I knew what I was paying for, and the devs have delivered as promised. Others getting a better deal after the fact is not changing the deal I agreed to in any way.

I do wonder why some people distinguish between a sale pre-release and one post-release. In both cases, others get a better deal than I got, because I ordered at the wrong time. But is the motivation to back a project through preordering really to get the best deal out of it, or is it to actually support development? If it's to support development, why should I complain about others pitching in as well, even if those happen to get a better deal?

In the end, every penny for Uber and every additional gamer in the community helps all of us to get more out of the product, so I'm glad if PR opportunities like this are being taken by Uber. And I don't regret spending over $100 for the development of the game even without having actually played it more than a few times.

And this pattern is nothing new. They similarly lowered the price of the $90 pre-order package to $70 a few months after it was already on the marketplace. Also they have been on record many times saying the price will drop and continue to do so the closer to release. If you've followed the whole business side of the PA campaign you would have known something like this was going to happen and that it needed to happen. Uber should, as they been doing this whole campaign, stand firm on their decisions. No solutions is needed in this situation. They have their own plans and goals with their development cycle. And for all we know those who did buy-in early may get a special unannounced reward as a big thank you.

I also find it hard to believe you cannot cancel your $40 pre-order through the Uber store. If that is the case I'd be more upset over that than the Humble sale. I bet all those who raged about the price on Steam gained a bit more respect for Uber of this sale.

"You can please some of the people some of the time but you can't please all the people all the time."

There are two different $40 packages. One was only avaiable during the KS campaign. The other is the Pre-Order package in the Uber Store.

The KS $40 package includes beta access, digital game copy, soundtrack download and wallpaper. The $40 Uber Store package includes Digital game copy, Theta Commander (Pre-Order Exclusive), soundtrack download and wallpaper. The $60 Uber Store package only has Beta Access extra. I don't see how this sale affects anything? The $40 KS buyers got what they paid for as well as the $40 Uber Store buyers. If you would have known that there was going to be a single day, 24 hour sale on the $60 Uber Store package that would take place a couple months after the Beta has been live would you wait for that sale? If yes are you more concerned about getting a good game for a decent price or is simply supporting Uber and the RTS genre enough to make you happy? Or both?

I was informed by support that my Uber store preorder cannot be canceled at that point. If I could cancel it and then buy the 40$ equivalent with beta access, there would be no topic at all. They just locked the money and gave 'more attractive' deal. We didn't pay for beta, true, but 40$ guys didn't pay too and the beta is halfway done...

You say that the price went down part way though alpha. It was fair because people had already been in the alpha for some time.

The point that your missing is this. People who pre-ordered with $40 don't have the beta. People who got it from this deal payed $40 and get more then the $40 pre-order. Now this might be OK apart from the fact that the $40 pre-order hasn't been delivered.

And now we just learned that everyone on pre-order will get access to the beta in a matter of days.

Problem solved. Can we now go on helping to make this game awesome?

Heh, I suppose congratuations are in order, Liquius

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/youre-in-come-smash-some-planets-with-us-backers.53885/

It's interesting to note, that we intended to let people in long before Humble approached us about the sale opportunity.

We have not responded to this thread, because, frankly, there's nothing we could say that is going to change peoples opinions. We make plans, and generally, we try and stick with them. I'm sorry some people got upset and offended. I know it all stems from an excitement about getting in and playing the game.

I would just say, in general, I've found life to be a lot more bearable when I look for reasons to be happy and enjoy the situation, rather than reasons to get upset about its perceived unfairness. That is my take away from this thread.

Hope to see you all in game soon.

Lesson learned guys.
Not everything goes according to perfectly according to plan. (Especially when trying to squeeze out a next-gen game on a shoestring budget).

But Uber is willing to fix it.
What more can you really ask?

Welp, this thread is now moot considering everybody that has paid during the kickstarter should be in very soon: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/youre-in-come-smash-some-planets-with-us-backers.53885/

Hurray!

I agree, there are plenty of things to get sad about (poverty, abuse, hatred, wars, diminishing resources, climate change), and a computergame is not one of them. Keep up the great work!

Well, this solves all, just the lack of such info was sorta irritating. Thanks for solving this. I can understand why you held the decision to some time after humblestore. It's like the situation with diretide and valve, community got mad not because the event was not supposed to happen, but the dev didn't respond anyhow to community and inform them before the time of predicted event.

Anyways, thank you Uberent and thanks everyone for discussion and input in this thread. Have a nice day and let the planets shatter!