What's up?

Discussion in 'Planetary Annihilation General Discussion' started by Auraenn, November 23, 2014.

  1. Auraenn

    Auraenn Active Member

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    So I've been lurking and checking back on this game and it's development process for the past 3 months and I've noticed some significant improvements like symmetrical maps and 1v1 ladder and all that but it the game still lacks the fun and depth that I've been looking for. It just didn't feel very fleshed out and the main features that were supposed to separate this game from the bunch really weren't done very well. Lately I've been wondering if I'll ever even pick it up again but I care a lot about the progress of the game and I want to see it become leagues better than what it is now.

    Now to get to the point without all the rambling and all that. How do all of you guys think the progress is going along and where do you think the game will be in the months to come? I haven't played the game in about 2 months and I'm just sitting back waiting for Uber to pull some ace out of their sleeve to impress me and get me back into it. Pretty simple, right?

    What would you guys would want to see from Uber in the coming year. When I say that I mean realistically, not stuff like "hey guys lets put some ridiculous features into the game that would take too much dev resources to even be a viable option."

    I'm sorry if this seems like an odd post but I just kind of had these questions and I really wanted to hear something from the inside on all of this progress. Lurking can only get you so much information. I really love this game and the genre and would love for Uber to continue to innovate and improve upon their past ideals and practices.

    So guys, what's up?
    tunsel11 likes this.
  2. MrTBSC

    MrTBSC Post Master General

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    personaly i find the game lacks flexibility ... meaning better transportation and thus macroability over multiplanetplay ..
    another wish would be hovercrafts and a dedicated factory ...

    galactic war needs some improvement but i dont have specific suggestions to it ... the rest is ballancing

    oh and welcome to the forums
  3. calmesepai

    calmesepai Member

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    Well the way I see it a lot more communication has been from Uber Mainly from jables so look him up for dev updates would reveal a fare bit.

    Soon we have a lots of custom maps that are not round

  4. squishypon3

    squishypon3 Post Master General

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    Honestly Uber is very close to putting in every feature people used to complain wasn't in the game in the past, all that's missing now is the Unit cannon, eh? :D

    Personally all I want is more modding api. <3
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  5. cola_colin

    cola_colin Moderator Alumni

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    I've been wondering over my personal wishlist for a while ^^

    - the ladder needs a better mappool. Roughly 8 systems. 2-3 small (like the 3 systems in pte), 2-3 medium (single planet 600-700, maybe add in a tiny moon or two) 2 big (maybe one single planet 900 + moon and one multiplanet 800 and 800 or something)
    - the ladder needs to display all players, not just the top 10, come on that can't be that hard :p
    - the planet editor obviously needs a lot of polish. I'd say it definitely needs: 1) placement of brushes, features and decals with a UI component to directly select them, not just copy paste. 2) placement of spawns, with a feature to attach them to certain slots in the lobby for teamgames. 3) ability to control brush settings in a UI. So i.e. it becomes possible to directly enter numbers for all the settings as well as control the mergable/pathable attributes 4) probably more lots of tiny things I am forgetting...
    - there needs to be a "massive" rebalance of some parts of the game. Starting with the economy on t1 (see the link in my signature), going over some units changes and additions (i.e. add back the t1 aa bot, maybe with changed functionality, like high range very low dps low vision range or something. Make it different to vehicle aa, balance some t2 units to be more useful). Also orbital and navy need to be reworked. I am not an expert on that though. What I do know is:
    - there need to be orbital UI improvements, I've written a post about that here already: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/...ent-my-humble-suggestions.65844/#post-1031565 Currently the orbital UI is so bad I try to not build orbital because it is a horrible pain to handle.
    - a global chat that works like the one line chat from smnc once you open the Multiplayer tab ingame. Should be part of the uberbar, so it stays in all scenes. Should allow people to disable it or to maximize it to be big enough to chat. Can be based on the existing jabber system.
    - Especially for navy I'd like to see a rescale. Like scale all units down by 50%. They are just waaaaay too big.
    - mid term I want to see more server modding: gameplay scripting!

    If I had to set priorities:
    Then GW probably also needs fixes, but I never really played that so no idea from my side for that.
    Last edited: November 26, 2014
    xankar, Zaphys, Remy561 and 3 others like this.
  6. tatsujb

    tatsujb Post Master General

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    heeeyy you forgot threading & optimisations. I thought that was like your N°1 wish. :)
  7. cola_colin

    cola_colin Moderator Alumni

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    ups, added it. Though it isnt actually that high up compared to other points. 1vs1 performance is pretty good anyway ;)
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  8. philoscience

    philoscience Post Master General

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    Number 1 by far: a comprehensive rebalancing, adjusting all the things that were uber-nerfed or uber-buffed back to reasonable levels. Particular focus on viable mixed unit compositions, bringing back viable t1 defense, pushing the climax of the game forward, and adding in a few more unit types to maximize the number of viable metagames

    Number 2: as much modability as the devs can possible give us. Modable everything. Extra template unit models that can easily be used for making new units. All the hooks.
  9. tatsujb

    tatsujb Post Master General

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    :confused: that's unfair. you know full well that's not the sum of PA.
  10. squishypon3

    squishypon3 Post Master General

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    Well but this thread is about what someone wants personally. Selfish selfish humans. C:
  11. cola_colin

    cola_colin Moderator Alumni

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    to me in the end 1vs1 is what matters. 40 player ffa is fun for the lulz, but it's not the main thing
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  12. philoscience

    philoscience Post Master General

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    We represent opposite ends of the spectrum. For me 3v3v3v3 or 5v5 is what it will always be about.
  13. emraldis

    emraldis Post Master General

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    combat fabbers need a balance fix too. Though honestly, I'm not sure about a T1 AND a T2 combat fabber. The more I play the more I think there should only be 1...
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  14. cola_colin

    cola_colin Moderator Alumni

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    oh another feature for the ranked search:

    [​IMG]

    having a "somebody is searching ranked in your league" on the server browser right next to a "search now" button like this. Helps a lot in getting more users to search.
  15. immorhys

    immorhys New Member

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    I'd have to agree with the above. The actual problem is the game just isn't that fun anymore.

    I don't play 1vs1, that requires dedicating time memorising builds, I don't like that kind of game play. I like 3vs3/4/5, but these games are extremely rare to even happen, and even rarer to get a team that can agree on anything except killing the ecom and blaming each other, because they are all playing 1vs1 scripts. Or even worse, the game crashes. Getting 8 players together is difficult, after a crash 1 hour into a game, I think people just stop playing. Lately I've just been doing GW, its broken as anything, but at least I don't have to argue 10 minutes to get a game started that'll crash out.

    Naval is completely stuffed, and has been for ages. Orbital is the same. These have been stuffed for a long time.
    At a rough guess, 60% of the units in the game are completely useless for anything. The economy is brutal, as soon as you're out of energy, you're out of the game. Building energy should never cost that much energy, it should cost metal.

    The bug tracker is full. Some of these bugs exceed a year. Spectator joining existing game and not seeing units is one that annoys the hell out of me, along with no spectators by default. For a game that allows replays etc, its very hard to watch a game in progress.

    From cola_colins list (even with his 1vs1 obession :), I'd agree with everything: stop pussyfooting around with little changes, just do them. Forget any concept of 'maintaining the status quo' with balance, its terrible to play. Dox4Lyfe looks more balanced to me :)

    Learn from the Kerbal Space Program, they made major game play changes to keep interest alive in the game, while ALL developers post a weekly update on what they are working on. They added mods to the main game to improve at very little development cost. If the community has done a better job for free, and is throwing the changes at you, you're insane to sit back arrogantly and say no.

    The custom maps people put together this week are awesome. Make your editor capable of making these. If you're going to claim you have the 'most' 3d maps ever, let us have some maps that aren't flat spheres. I don't know how much effort it would be to create 2d top down square maps (lock camera scroll range, disable tilt, single planet, what, a day of work?) but this would get you so many more players who hate navigating the sphere maps. The units are too slow to go the long way around even these tiny planets. Cute concept, doesn't always play well, puts a lot of people off, give them the simpler option?
    Auraenn and ace63 like this.
  16. squishypon3

    squishypon3 Post Master General

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    Did someone just say the units are too slow? I almost giggled, they're much too fast imo. o.o
  17. cola_colin

    cola_colin Moderator Alumni

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    Depends which unit and which planet sizes. Dox are fast, but ants are rather slow indeed. Especially when you compare them to dox.
  18. tatsujb

    tatsujb Post Master General

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    yeah. a bit too harsh. the difference doesn't need to be a chasm.
  19. Murcanic

    Murcanic Well-Known Member

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    random question, do we still have the unit stats from back in beta? I would love to get a mod of those stats and play a game of beta balance again and compare it to current ^^
  20. cola_colin

    cola_colin Moderator Alumni

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    oh btw I forgot to add chronocam savegames to my list of priorities, adding it

    http://pa-db.com/?version=50355
    also I think @mered4 is working on exactly such a mod.
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