STEAM

Interesting... as for Hardware I'm watching that one keenly but would love for them to release more detail about it.

I took a look but couldn't really find any dev posts. I guess they are behind a wall like you are saying.

Still waiting for someone to point out a developer with the level of interaction we have. Just making a point here that this isn't a normal game dev process.

It wasn't meant to be a challenge, I'm sorry if it came across that way

I'm involved with HARDWARE, and have been for some time. Unfortunately, NDAs, ho

Nice! I just pinged the guys on linkedin the other day when I first heard about the game.

Maybe from you're viewpoint, with what biases you have, but having alpha access at a discount from regular price is NOT Win-Win from Uber's Perspective.

I'm saying that Uber just from the KickStarter has a large(Very Large) group of potential testers, larger than the full group of Consumer Testers for most games as most testing is done either internally or by QA focused Companies. And as you can see by these forums, you don't need to be an Alpha tester to share thoughts or ideas with the Devs, but I will say that doing Alpha/Beta Testing does allow for more directed help in the shaping and in general the improvement of the game.

Mike

I think the problem for steam boils down to presentation. The Galactic Edition is essentially a collector's edition for PA. As a collector's edition that $90 price doesn't seem so absurd anymore. The $90 price "to test your game" does seem silly, but that's not really what's being sold.

Would it be possible to somehow indicate the Collector's Edition is what's being sold and a normal edition will come in August? Perhaps it's too late anyway. A lot of people got worked up over what amounts to semantics.

I'm sick and tired of all this "kickstarter is donation crap". It's not. If I was promised an exclusive commander, or planetary naming, and I don't get it, I'd be incredibly pissed.

If kickstarter was about donations, free-to-play games would do much better and there would be no campaign time limit.

Trion Worlds and Petroglyph have really good dev interaction. Petroglyph in particular is fantastic about it. But i view them as being from the same generation of designers as you guys so it's not really a fair comparison; similar times, similar views etc.


Also! I am sure others have said this already, but I must strongly state my opinion that this game should be removed from steam for purchase. I have friends who had never even heard of PA now complaining about it out of nowhere, simply because of the price tag. Everyone is talking about it.

This will go (has already gone) viral very fast, in a manner of speaking.

Devs, imagine the kind of marketing strategy you want. You want us all talking to our friends, get them to buy it, they talk about it to their friends, etc.

Well this is the nega-verse version of that. Everyone is talking about your game, negatively. We the community now find ourselves doing damage control on your behalf but it's not working!

I can't stand to see another game I love go the way of End of Nations or Universe at War. This steam thing could be the "thing" that inadvertantly kills this game before it can shine, just line GFWL killed UaW and premature over-exposure ( and loss of original vision) killed EoN. People talk, and when it's negative, it spreads like wildfire.

In customer service, there is the concept that if you are good to everyone you interact with, 1 in 20 will share their experience with others. If they have a negative experience however, 4 out of 5 will share that with others.

It might be a good idea to not offer Alpha Access through the purchasing option anymore, but instead to do closed invitations and simply offer the game on steam on normal pre-order or beta pre-order.

Sure, we early backers paid our due for our spots, but the general public see's doing an alpha as doing you a favor, because they kinda are. Charging them extra for that can't be looked well upon. Besides, the early backers care about this game doing well. I know some of us insist on fairness, but none of us want to see this game drop like a rock. Honestly, it's probably easier to piss us off and do damage control here than it is to piss off the general public and be helplessly disarmed. We are, at least, a relatively captive audience.

I know you guys are listening. The steam market is a very important market, but they are important because they have so much collaborative, community driven buying power, but that works both ways.

You guys are going to make your decisions, just know that this is a big one that could easily kill this game despite all the work that went into it. UaW was outstanding, but it only sold 6,600 copies on release as news of "GFWL pay-to-play an RTS game online" hit every single community that Petroglyph had spent so much effort marketing too. It has sold more since, but it's a dead franchise, and I find that extremely disappointing.

End of Nations was basically the same thing. Don't let Planetary Annihilation be a third on my list. I put too much effort into these things as a supporter for them to fail!

Yes but thats exactly the problem. Does a fan of the game provides better feedback just because he payed 90$ for the alpha. Many players cant pay so much financially for one alpha , so is their feedback less falid just because they have payed less money than you have and so they cant take part on the alpha ?

There is no corelation between paying money for the alpha and the quality of feedback you will give.

The only reason why there are +8k in alpha is because they are starveing for an new sci-fi rts because there are so less out there and so some of them are willing to pay nearly everything for playtesting alpha. But thats not fair against those people to take benefit from that. Its like selling an drug addict his drugs for the double amount of the regular price.

Ive abandoned the Steam forums. Just troll after troll and ive got a sore head repeating the same info.


Please I beg someone in charge at Uber to do whatever they have to do to get the forums shut down or the whole steam thing removed. Let all those trolls go off and do something else and then when the game returns for release in december, the ********'s wont be able to insult anything when the game is sitting infront of them at £40.

Pleaseeeeee!! If I go on steam again ill be too tempted to go back to that forum and get annoyed trying to explain the price to more trolls and ill get addicted!

Shut it downnnn

It really is becoming the norm for smaller developers to work closely with the community. If you will allow me an internetizm "it's the new meta". Companies like Riot Games which I will admit is mostly an ur-example as their game has been out for ages, are very involved in their community, You can even request games with Riot employees on their forums, and more often than not they will oblige.

But i my first post I pointed out three that do it more-or-less as much as you guys do, and I am not saying it isn't good that you do it, but others do it too. Heck even some companies like Banpresto like actively trolling their communities.

In the end You can take my examples or leave them as you will. I won't fault you for it, I'm just some anonymous person on the internet.

Find me a single one where the project lead has 1000+ posts related to the game. Think of it as a challenge

Does Eve Online count?

http://www.stardrivegame.com/forum/memb ... rofile&u=2

What do I win? =P

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/member.php?2-Joha

15,000 posts, most of which relate to his games.

You win the contest Any idea how big this dev is?

But i got an even bigger (and arguably more successful) one...

You can be the zero-ith winner.

I'm glad to see there are a few others out there.

No no. You don't get to ignore my giant love letter of a post on page 37. Go read that, come back, and reciprocate my love.

It's not a contest. Any dev interaction whatsoever is great.