Will this game ever be epic?

I disagree, it has nothing to do with time. The current units they have put out are not creative at all, most of them are even worse clones from TA or FA. There is zero unit creativity there. actually ill take that back, there is "some". Id argue that the sniper bot and some of the orbital stuff is pretty creative, but land unit variety is pretty dismal and boring. Even naval isn't great. FA and even SC2 has much more interesting naval combat. FA and SC2 definitely feel a lot more epic with better sounds, effects. Seriously watch some youtube videos and compare the two. PA doesn't feel nearly as epic.

Time has nothing to do with their current portfolio. You can't use that excuse on Ubers behave. There is no excuse for the current unit variety. You can make that argument for lack of expiramentals if you wish, but it doesn't explain the current unit design.

Bologna, that's a funny word.

Anyway did you watch the video because that's apparently what FA devolves into. I've not played the game in at least a year, I was surprised to see the units phasing through eachother, but like I said that seems to be what just ends up happening when the game dies.

Sorry but your glorious FA still has terrible pathing to this very day, worse than PA's infamous pathing. c: (Unless FAF has fixed this?)

I don't know what to say about that. lol I guess? Time is everything. You can't make cool looking units without time. That is not just about creativity either. Anyone can come up with fancy ideas that seem cool. But if you actually think about them more you realize that the more fancy it gets the more playtesting you need to make sure it actually works and makes sense. And before that you need people from the art department to come up with how to make your fancy idea look good. And before that you need people developing the engine write code to handle those fancy legs that ship is supposed to have when it starts walking on land.
And then you realize you are talking about month of work to make fancy stuff happen and you first implement plain tanks, because hey everyone needs a "boring" basic unit and you rather first implement things like pathfinding or make the game work at all instead of having your programmers work on additional unit abilities.

It's not like Supreme Commander doesn't have those basic tanks as well.


I am pretty sure units like that were added first to Supreme Commander as well. Difference is that back then the game was hidden away from the public until much later.

then this game simply is not for you ...
i have compared ta fa and pa nummerous times and i can say without a doubt pa feels much more epic as well as actionpacked than supcom .. TA is rather loud but both ta and fa feel slow and dont start of as quick as pa does .. the only area where pa lacks is orbital .. it however doesn't need fancy units to be a fun game or epic ...

@cola_colin thinking about it i would argue that like 80% of the units and structures feel basic in that game and are merely cool because of looks and size but still basic in function ... example seraphim tx bomber ...

You guys have to admit, PA still has some effects from Alpha! (Such as a few default explosions and the little blip that comes out of dox and ants)

Though PA hands down has the best explosions, as they're real 3D explosions; not s bunch of sprites and they fit with the game's aesthetic so well.

Well then I'd argue the game shouldn't be released in it's current state and should probably still be in beta / alpha. If it's going to be missing so many fundamentals.

I would need to compare explosions side by side to rule on that but SC2 and FA definitely have more effect variety. They also look a lot better. If you seriously think PA naval feels more epic then FA or SC2 naval then you should seriously consider making an appointment with an optometrist.

Samantha Clarke says:

Shields dammit! Get those shields up!!





-Morloc

heck i dont even mind them ...
to be entirely honest i dig the old muzzleeffects tanks had back than much more than those we have now ...
gave them quite the umpf when firing ...

I didn't see him say he thought PA naval was more epic than Supcom's anywhere?

But I do completely disagree with you on explosions, Supcom explosions looked pretty cool, sure, but PA would look super inconsistent if it had super realistic explosions. Besides, like I said- PA's explosions actually exist within the game unlike Supcom in which they were all 2d sprites stacked on top of eachother (I think the only explosions with some 3d was the commander and nuke explosions, I think they used a sphere iirc)

PA just can't have effects that look like Supcoms... It'd look- out of place. As while Supcom went for the realistic gritty look, PA has gone for a much more clean and a bit light hearted aesthetic and it's explosions and many effects fit perfectly.

I do agree however that there are stragglers that should be replaced, things like the dox bullets, the default explosion, and some other things. it really annoys me to see these effects from Alpha beside the nice effects of today. All they nred are tune ups.

yes they do simply because they ignore the whole realistic gritty stuff fa has going for it .. i would argue that only the uef nuke and seraphim tx bomber explosion looked realy good ... maybe the cybran nuke and mavor shell aswell ... but everything else was just a bit flashy and tiny ...

What I consider epic has not much to do with what an optometrist could solve, as I said the definition of "epic" is pretty much arbitrary. I really mean it when I say that scaling down all units by 50% would make the game feel more "epic" to me.
And yeah it is beyond me why they pushed for the release like that. They knew it was too early but still did. They had mystery business reasons that they do not want to talk about because business and well nothing is going to change about it now.
As long as they keep working on the game it is going to be okay. It is not like they stopped developing. Far from it, they are making good progress.

;D

Now seriously everyone should agree those walls are soo much more epic than these walls.

I never said I disagreed with you on explosions, just that I would need to compare side by side before I passed judgement. There are more to effects then just explosions though, projectiles, missile trails, torpedoes, lasers ect.

Having just watched a few youtube videos of SC2 and FA I'd say it's pretty clear the games visuals look a lot more epic. In FA you have ships with huge rail guns, super long range motors, anti air, laser beams, large multiguned super units. SC2 has point defense on it's ships which add another layer of depth and the torpedoes look phenomenal in the water. Also ships list. It's apparent SC2 and FA's teams have a better eye for attention to detail and took more care with the game. PA's look pitiful by comparison. It's definitely more epic, look for yourself if you don't believe me:


vs this:


Even though the video is a year old, it's still a pretty good representation of naval today in PA, boring.

Here are some pretty amazing effects in an RTS:



If you fast forward a bit to 1:38 you'll see there is muzzle flash and smoke from the barrel of the gun, the tank's suspension rocks from the recoil.

I agree, compare something like a bunch of intimidators firing away in TA
(the quality is awful at 480p make sure you select a higher resolution)

to a cluster of Holkins firing away in PA.



It has a decent firing sound, but the explosion sound is practically non existent. The shot lazily sails through the air and lands with a pffft.

The intimidator shots in TA fly across the map at high speed and you can hear the impact.

PA... it just doesn't have it.

Don't get me wrong, I love PA, it's an awesome game, but I think the effects could use some polish.

Another thing I noticed is there isn't a lot of color in PA's effects. Why is that? Notice in TA's video when units die physics kick in and pieces shoot off in all directions.

cdrkf where can I get the sky box mod, color trail mod etc I do not see it on PAMM? Just watched the video on the orbital mod you mentioned & it does look cool will need to try it out. Unfortunately I hardly ever see anyone playing custom mods or maps...I hardly seen the servers populated for that matter...

Also guys Im not saying this game can never be epic..It has serious potential to be epic but what needs to be improved upon & fixed is the many things I have suggested in this thread along with what others have said...Can everyone here start hosting more mods, custom maps plz...

A free steam weekend might be cool. Once the "things one can dig up to complain about" is down to a minimum. Particularly with the new savegames coming up, once they are stable.

Then again, how do you "free weekend" a game with a functioning offline mode? Either way, however that can be done, it would influx into the game better. Besides, even if it were done, the updates keep coming and those only come to customers.

Here is a video of orbital war mod. It adds a lot of interesting units to orbital which I feel is sorely needed. However, how do you get all those cool colors going on? It would be awesome if we could combine orbital warfare mod, add more naval units, add hover units, and add commanders with different strengths and weaknesses to add variety to the game. Since we have no diff factions in this game having commanders like in league of commanders it could add that extra variety & depth.

Im not sure what you mean by colours, explosions are pretty much red orange and yellow.. Of course unless it's plasma or some other silly thing. Also I could be wrong, but I'm almost certain there is no physics in what you see, it's probably a 2d animation.

The question "will this game ever be epic?" is entirely opinion. I myself think this game is epic. The only mods I use is the ones that changes/add effects. Naval/Air trails, cplosion, all of fr33lancers team mods and a bunch of other ones.

The effect mods are definitely on Pamm under ui mods... sometimes it can be tricky to find them. Try searching with short parts of the title e.g. 'sky' would bring up the skybox mod.

Then you have 'team colored air trails', 'naval trails', 'awesome projectiles' and 'pa fx' that all help funk things up 'cplosions' might be worth a look too...