What comes after TITANS?

Hi,

What comes after TITANS?
Are there plans for new official (payed) editions?

for example:
Planetary Annihilation: TITANS 2.0
Planetary Annihilation: Tactical

It would be nice... although after the fiasco that was the human resources kickstarter I'm certain uber won't be going that route.

Currently they appear to be focused on PlayStation VR titles. Personally I don't expect to see a new rts from uber, although I'd love to be proven wrong!

PA Titans, Legion is next.

Question is how many people will support and buy expansions? Uber needs some good publicity and sales to make the development worthwhile.
I would support them for a long time going forward, but I don't think I speak for the market unfortunately..

Planetary Obliteration is what comes next

I'm still pleasantly surprised to see the occasional patch released. Perhaps we'll get a few more down the road to bump up performance a bit more or add small but cool new features

Yeah I think a few more patches are in the works, a large part in thanks to the communities @mikeyh who was responsible for additions like the integrated mod manager etc...

for the moment? VR games ...

I think the better question is what SHOULD come after Titans.

Or how could it be possible to get any more content for PA.

There is a difference between "should" and "can" ... just saying ...

because on the "should"side we discussed that over many pages

I don't understand why Planetary Annihilation does not get more publicity. I mean, what modern real time stetegy game is around us, today? There are not many other games available...

Why was the human resources kickstarter a fiasco?
@cdrkf

PA:Titans actually has been doing quite well since the Winter sale- and you are correct it's one of a handful of recent RTS titles and imo by far the most innovative.

The others that I can think of are:
- Grey Goo (came out around the same time as original PA)
- Homeworld Deserts of Karak (also the remasters of the original HW1 / HW2), it's a nice game
- Ashes of the Singularity

These are all decent but also play it pretty safe. PA really brought something new to the table even if not to everyone's taste.

A very abridged history of Human Resources:
- Uben significantly grew their team during PA development (up to about 60 devs) by the time the original version of PA was released.
- PA at launch was missing a number of features promised in the kickstarter (which Uber said they were still working on and were still coming, the main ones being offline mode, the unit cannon and save / load functionality)
- Just after the PA launch they announce the HR kickstarter

Now you need to understand- there was a hardcore group of anti uber people left over from the end of Super Monday Night Combat- and also a group who generally didn't like PA ('RTS on Planets Sucks'). These were generally outweighed by more positive people who were supporting the game during development. However- when Uber declared PA launched, this group got a lot more support and a lot more people got angry.

*Then* they announce Human Resources. The initial launch of the kickstarter went well- raising a good chunk of the money they needed, then the anti uber brigade got involved- news story comment sections, the kickstarter itself and anywhere there was any positive information about the project were *flooded* by this group telling stories of how Uber serially abandon games and never finish them (citing SMNC no longer getting updates- despite Uber continuing to this day to keep the servers going for a F2P game that made them no money)- they also concluded that Uber were 'abandoning' PA due to it not being completely finished at launch. PA was hit by 'screw uber' reviews and they managed to pull original PA down from a positive score to very negative (about 20% at it's worst) on steam- all bemoaning how uber 'lied' to backers.

Basically they managed to kill the kickstarter- the funding stopped coming in and with only a few days left Uber pulled it rather than letting it fail. The end result- Uber were forced to massively cut headcount. Despite that they continued providing free updates to PA and added in all the 'missing' features.

I've said it before- Uber are a very talented team of engineers / artists, however they aren't great at marketing / managing the community and that is what hurt them. PA came out just as several other high profile kickstarter failures so I think they were caught up in a general anti crowdfunding backlash and there were many gamers looking for holes / problems in any crowd funded project. The sad thing is the end result is we as gamers lose out. There are very few studios focusing on the RTS genre as it's just not as profitable as the generic shooters they release every year.

And there's always been that fight between "micro" vs "macro" RTS games that started with Total Annihilation vs Warcraft/Starcraft.
I introduced many friends to PA and they all loved it, except the Starcraft fans.
PA:Titans is the only game I play and I love it. I wish there were more people online playing it but I never have much of an issue finding games so that's not a big issue.

If I were uber, I wouldn't let me take down by these haters. I can understand criticisms because of unfinished games... But as we know today, Uber delivered And these haters were just wrong. I'd love Uber to be big again

I gave PA to about 5 friends, and also all of them loved it until now. Well, one person haven't try it out...

Maybe one time uber is having a big reboot and doing engine inprovments and then finally launch "Human Resources" and "Planetary Annihilation: Tactical"

Yes, Ubers marketing is bad. I loved playing Total Annihilation and springrts was one of the few games I play most time... And I *never* heard of "Planetary Annihilation" before Q4/2016.

I quit playing the game over a year ago because I realised that although I had an urge to play, on balance, it wasn't much fun.

They managed to build a great base for a game, but I think they need a large level of investment to release something that the casual player can get behind.

What might that look like to you?
How does the game not appeal to the casual player now?

The game needs publicity, it's one of the best RTS on the market currently (my fave of all time so far). It kicks ashes butt for fun, its just not many people know about it. I think giving titans to the classic player is a good move, could help make the company look like it gives a damn for one, Ashes devs gave escalation to everyone for free not long ago, their reasons for releasing an expansion were like Ubers stated, they didn't want the base game to resemble escalation, so they thought they would make an expansion to please the latter part of the community, like the ones pushing for titans. The expansion split the player base dramatically, and everyone obviously thought, you guys are just milking the pocket, which obviously it was mainly, so they came to the conclusion before they ruined their game its player base and their reputation (they already had, the DLC before release!) they would give it to all owners of Ashes for free as they had indeed split the community and lost respect with a lot of fans, same thing happened when titans was released, a large portion of the playerbase either left because of the move, or left because the classic experience died. I think the move would be a sound one, for Uber and PA.

Do they even partake in these forums anymore??

Yes occasionally, usually if they have something to announce (they were about for release of wayward sky for PSVR).

As for giving away Titans- you do know all 44000 kickstarter backers got it free yeah? Then they gave everyone else a hefty 66% reduction (which is permanent and still available).

I really don't understand this weird backlash against stand alone expansions, as a long term gamer I've seen this many times over the years, this is very different from the dodgy EA tactic of breaking a game down into lots of tiny pieces and then charging high prices for each as 'dlc' whilst still charging full whack for the base game all at launch. Uber worked on Titans for a year before releasing it. All this argument says to me is 'we want free stuff'- which brings us back to no developer will touch rts because there is no money in it cause the players won't pay for it.

And PA is the most successful RTS to come out in recent years. It has higher player numbers than anything released since.

Gamers just vastly overrate their understanding of the gaming industry. They want free content updates, but where is the funding for that coming from? When gamers think Titans should have been a free update, how do they think the company can support continued development? A gamee looks at something like Rocket League and then applies its model to all games regardless of fit. It's maddening.