The Future of PA and Titans

Some of you have been asking about the future of PA and Titans. We are currently building up a new team to continue working on some ideas we've had, as well as many issues we've seen come up. We'll be talking with the community on that plan post migration, and get a feel for what the majority of players are looking for, which will help us prioritize what order the work will be done in.

We've gone through a lot of changes on the Uber side over the last 4 years, but know that we see you still playing. and our goal for the new team is to be more involved, and more communicative. We have some foundational issues with the game that need to be looked at first, but we're excited to work on making PA and Titans feel more alive again.

We wanted to share some of the things we’ve been working on and that are currently in the pipeline:

• Ladder reset for 1v1 giving everyone a fresh shot at hitting the top of the ladder
• Working on server performance and optimizations to improve player experience (some of these optimizations have already been made)
• New 1v1 ranked maps

We will let everyone know as these come online.

Also, for those of you who did not see the announcement, Community Mods, the Community Dedicated Server, Community Chat and Legion Expansion support are now up and running.

Great news, I know a lot of people have been asking for the ladder reset and new 1v1 ranked maps. Thank you for listening to the players! I'll definitely start playing ranked again once the new maps arrive!

Yeah amazing news, thanks so much. A visible point and decay system will improve the experience in my opinion.

I think generally the server improvements have been noticeable. Thank you Uber for that work, keep it up.

Thanks uber I cannot wait to start working with you along with the pa community

What can we as community do for you?

Awesome stuff can't wait to try it out again.

I hope some completely new ones! Some cool themes and all.

They picked nothing but the finest Violet Ania maps. It's all hearts and bits that look like wall but aren't.

Owh my gawd. The cheese.

This is a great idea, maybe everyone with 300 or 500 + ranked games gets a skin?

Gold Commandonut when?

On a more serious note, I think ranked really needs a frequent map rotation. It's really boring to just have to grind the same few maps over and over again to stay competitive with the rest of the top ubers. Some variety would mean that there would be more competition at the top since players would scramble to learn the maps and fight for the top spots (perhaps implement a season system similar to other competitive games). Furthermore, it would be easier for newer, talented players to climb to the top more quickly and claim a spot they deserve because they no longer have the disadvantage of a lack of experience on a few specific maps. Rewarding players for playing games with commanders similar to how games such as Overwatch reward competitive play with gold guns is also a good incentive to play.

Players in the PA community are also calling for 2v2 ranked. Although I agree that this would be awesome, I don't think we're in a position where it would be active at all - we don't really have a healthy and fiercely competitive ranked 1v1 scene at the moment. I believe competitive PA needs to be further developed and promoted in the main game for such a ranked mode to be viable; at the moment it's just a ranked button and a leaderboard. All tournaments at the moment are just community events put on by committed players usually without prizes. I'm well aware that Uber-run tournaments are highly unlikely, but perhaps add some in-game rewards for winning tournaments similar to Team Fortress 2 (Valve awards participants in-game medals for community tournaments).

good point. for economic reasons maybe then just use random maps (awesome systems mod). But then the maps look all similar.

I don’t think anyone would agree with using randomly generated maps over maps that had actually been designed, even if it meant the map pool was stale. Would rather have a slower rotation than random systems devoid of strategy.

Perhaps groups of maps (with some overlap) based on ranked level of the players. Maybe lots of metal in easily defended spawn points for lower level players with more challenging maps as your rank increases.

I suspect everyone in this thread has read this a long time ago by now, but it felt like a good opportunity to pimp my article on the subject - Improving Planetary Annihilation's Ranking System.

I also concur that a 2v2 ladder would never work. You need an exponentially larger player base than you do for 1v1 ladder, and PA doesn't have the numbers. Few games do.

I wonder how well a game type other than 1v1 ranked will do, it may do better than a lot of people think.

Many players of PA just aren't interested in 1v1.

Maybe a smallish FFA format or a queue with a mix of game types and sizes could work.

I'd double down on 2v2: psychologically its easier to get into since you have the mentality that you can rely on a teammate and do better in a group (even if realistically that's not the case) At the very least its worth experimenting with

Yes and moreoever: Even majority of competitive pro-gamer prefer teamplay over 1v1. Someone told me.

Maybe using a combined ladder for 1v1 and 2v2. If enough players are available, then its doing 2v2, otherwise its doing 1v1.

But most people probably dont need ladder even. They just want to join a game easily. This is where automatic game creation scripts with automatic map selection or players' command voting could jump in. As springrts is doing. Spring then creates the "trueskill" rank, calculated from produced metal, energy, units and fighting efficiency.

Oh well so long as someone on the Internet said so then it must be true!