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This is problem 1. The FA community got way too attached to certain things about FA and forgot the one thing that truly defines a sequel. Change. What do people complain about every time a new call of duty comes out? "Waaaaah, it's the saaaame! Activi$ion is just trying to juice us for money!".

This is also part of problem 1. People tantrumed over not having their flow economy and tech levels, when there were significant, close-to-fatal flaws with those existing systems (flow economy led SupCom to be a Competitive Economy Simulator 2008 with only a side of combat, tier levels were totally screwed up and made a lot of units end up being throwaways that rarely got used).

Which is a taste thing. I loved SC2's art style more because it was nicer looking, more colorful, and still had cool, futuristic designs. Guess who trashed it as a toy army cartoon look though?

The story itself was decent enough, though the characters were kind of trash. But seriously, why would you ever buy a grand scale RTS for the story?

Primarily a function of people not being pampered at this point. Modding was and is possible, but all the prominent modders threw their hands up when they didn't get their fancy mod manager with lots of bells and whistles.

Maps, you're correct though. Not sure what happened there.

If all change is good, then Sup3 should be a first person shooter.

There's too much and there's too little. You should never things just because. Have a good reason for them.

Make sure the things that people are talking about aren't the symptoms of underlying problems.

If you are constantly coughing up blood, you don't take a cough suppressant. Coughing is a symptom of your body trying to stop itself from drowning in it's own blood.

[PS:] Modding support could have been added to Sup2 with one afternoon's worth of work by one engineer at GPG. I bought Sup2 just so I could hack and mod it: all the core functionality of mod support was still bloody there and working. The only thing missing was the ability to turn mods on and off, and send that list across the multiplayer lobby.

It wasn't being over pampered. It was just something that should have been done.

Okay, but the response of a sane person is "fine, it's working anyway, I'll just use what I have" instead of "F U GPG, im gonna trash your game in whatever outlets I can find to do so, just out of spite" (maybe not your personal reaction, but enough of the FA community did that to severely stunt the growth of supcom2's community )

SupCom 2 is modable and there were some Mods for it released.
Look at that page for some examples: http://www.moddb.com/games/supreme-commander-2/mods

I disagree; I think the same person's response is why one earth would you not include so much value, considering how little work it is?

With decent mod support, the existing community could have made a FA2 mod. Without it, a large portion of the old modders just dropped plans dead in the water.

And, on the topic of the community trashing the game: I was part of that, and I shouted and screamed, and talked about the problems before Sup2's launch. The "FA Community" did this too. If you're referring to the loud and public hate piled high on launch day, that was from people who had absolutely no idea what was coming. It was coming from the people who stopped playing SupCom well before the news of a sequel came out.

As someone who was keenly interested in the game, I followed the news closely from when it was announced. I remember everyone being excited when we learnt that SE was the publisher: we all thought that with SE's love of a good single-player, that Sup2's campaign was going to be amazing.

Then we saw some early screenshots, and thought it was a minor loss but everything else would make up for it. Then there was research. And the economy changes. And the Cybranasaurus Rex.

Come launch day: the actual community just stood there. The only thing we said was we told you so.


Don't get me wrong: I love GPG, and I want to support them. But... I don't want anyone to incorrectly think that a bad game is actually good by purchasing it to support the developer. In the end, I waited to buy the game when it was on sale. I bought it and the DLC (which, coupled with the continued post-launch patches, tuned it into a okay game) for about $10.

Five mods?

More than nothing and these mods are big ones.Look at Revamp for example.
It´s an overhaul mod for everything in the game and they are trying to find out how to make their own maps.

This argument irritates me when it is used ANYWHERE, for almost anything. Sure, maybe YOU didn't play the campaign or the skirmish mode all that much. But for many people, that's all they did when they bought the game. Now that Supcom 2 multiplayer is practically dead, that's all that many people are ever going to do now is play the campaign and the skirmish.

Is the campaign strong enough to hold up any kind of scrutiny to players as it stands now? I don't think so. So how is that somehow not a mark against the game? Even TA, which had almost no story whatsoever, provided a competent campaign by just stringing together a collection of scenarios.

It's just not right to say that the failings of a game are okay because the customer shouldn't have been seriously trying to enjoy that aspect in the first place. I feel the same way about some of the posts saying that it's the customer's fault that Supcom 2 didn't live up to Supcom 1 and how the consumer base are terrible people that should have been better consumers because they exercised their right to not buy something that didn't interest them (those darned customers not buying things on brand name alone!).

.. I think we've gotten way off topic, can we stop talking about Supcom now? That's ancient history at this point.

Umm.... As a noob to PC gaming I don't really know who is who but the telling in this thread lets me know Uber has snagged a killer. I may not be the biggest fan of RTS games but I may be among the biggest fans in wishing Uber do great and amazing things!

The amount of love this game is getting, both from the industry and fans, truly does convey it's significance within the gaming realm.

I truly hope PA becomes a HUGE success and accomplishes all of it's major goals! Best of luck to you all at Uber and those who help with their games!

Yeah, what is up with people in this day and age needing built-in mod support?

They arguably aren't modders if they can't literally mod a game. They are third rate client side content makers.

That's amazing news, sad to see you leave GPG in a way.
Regardless this is fantastic news for Planetary Annihilation.

Regarding the side discussion of supcom2. I think the game all in all was by no means bad. It was a diamond in the rough at launch but got some much needed patches over time and the DLC made things a lot better. Don't judge it by the demo!
Maybe it's because I played supcom2 before I really played supcom1. That being said I can understand the disappointment towards the no mod, map support and fairly drastic changes of gameflow.

By no means a bad game though and a lot of fun to pick up with a bunch of friends and have a good old fashion botstomp. Sadly the MP community has long gone and finding a human match will prove to be difficult.

Good point but not entirely fair. It takes time make a mod system that is accessible and doesn't end up breaking at every patch. Granted supcom2 had a lack of patches later on but ease of access means the world to most people. Being able to download mods/maps from the get go is infinitely better for the future of the game as a whole versus fiddling with a work around.
Games that last for multiple years have the mod community to thank for that; Which does end up in more revenue for the company.

That being said the supcom2 mod tools are extremely easy to use.

Same here. You can find a number of posts from me on several design decisions that I thought bad. By the time SupCom2 was released we had stopped complaining because we already knew what was coming. No need to defile the corpse of what was once my favorite RTS franchise. And saying 'I told you so' doesn't really help anybody either.

Enough of this though. I'm sure Uber will do way better in the design department and this is Sorian's thread. If you want to discuss SupCom2 go on the GPG forum or make a new thread.