Planetary Annihilation: Total Annihilation IN SPACE

[Mick]

The complaining on the Steam forum is going to be epic.

Going to be? The complaints started filling pages within a half hour of it going up. 

[LaughingThesaurus]

Yeah, I'm not going to keep reading the steam forums.
Okay, yeah, 90$ is a terribly high price, but I outlined a few reasons for it earlier and the devs brought up another one. This is the kickstarter price. If they didn't have it priced at that level, then everybody who actually kickstarted the game would feel pretty ripped off. Then, people don't actually seem to understand how much the price is dropping from that point... and they're judging the quality of the game based on alpha price alone. I'm not normally like this, normally I actually direct all the hate towards exploitative business models, but the guys on the steam forums are completely ignorant on the subject and are judging a game entirely based on factors outside of the game. The whole situation IS stupid but it isn't, say, SimCity or Xbox One stupid which is the way the community is treating it.

[Aklyon]

There is one good thing I've gotten from the steam forums, and that was in a PM. (It was how to activate all unlockables in Solar 2,since I'd gotten stuck and thought I'd ask the dev for some help)

The rest of the place is rubbish.

[LaughingThesaurus]

I actually just checked out the Xotic Steam Forums and the feedback there is pretty vile as well. There are people who just talk about how crap the game is because it's easy to beat, and they don't actually look at the game long enough to realize that the hard part is doing well and getting high scores.
I feel like if the alpha weren't 90$, people would be buying into it and complaining that the graphics are crap and the gameplay is broken and how unbelievable it is for developers to sell such a broken product.

[keith.lamothe]

I've seen some perfectly reasonable conversations over there.  But yea, I wouldn't swim in that pool.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Yeah I did look back and a couple of people are bringing up relevant points, but that's so easily drowned out by the campaigns of "EVERYBODY RATE THIS 0 ON METACRITIC FOR HAVING A HIGH PRICE THIS GAME IS TERRIBLE AND I DIDN'T BUY IT"

[Lancefighter]

Youknow what a much better community is? A nice, small irc channel. This is totally not me still trying to advocate #aiwar on appliedirc. (although it has seen a lot of activity and game-looking  requests of late!)

Really though, if you can find a good irc community, things are generally pretty nice.

[chemical_art]

if you can find a good irc community, things are generally pretty nice.

Is a good irc community nice, or a nice community good irc?

[Lancefighter]

if you can find a good irc community, things are generally pretty nice.

Is a good irc community nice, or a nice community good irc?

the first. The second typically doesnt happen; If there is a good community somewhere, they tend to stay where they are instead of making one on irc, if that makes sense.

[Echo35]

"What the developers say:
“Please be aware that not all of the features of the game are available. We are currently playing with a subset as the game isn't completed. By getting early access you are helping us to shape and form the game. Because we take feedback seriously we think that prioritizing access to the game early on is important. So we've put an emphasis on getting the game in front of you as early as possible.

Our anticipated schedule is as follows:

Alpha Early Access Begins: June 16th, 2013 - Alpha access may be restricted to online connection required

Beta Early Access Begins: September 6th, 2013 - Beta access may be restricted to online connection required

Retail Access Begins: December 15th, 2013

Please Note: These dates are subject to change. We will do everything we can to meet them, but it is possible that these dates may change as we continue the development process.”"

It's not like it's in a giant blue box at the top of the page or anything. Reading is hard.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Maybe they could include the different pricetags there? I've read people who are like "No, the game's going to be 80$ when it's released and Riot's greedier than EA."
Then again, there are people on the board who just blatantly ignore the sticky and don't understand why it can't be any lower of a price. Either they're blind or stupid. It's so bad that they had to pin a dedicated game discussion thread.

[Mánagarmr]

The amount of stupidity on display from gamers is baffling. It was the same when Xenonauts released their early access. "OMG XCOM ripoff, and it's buggy as hell!" ... wow...really? What part of "reimagination" and "early access" did you miss? It appears to be the same here.

[Mick]

I understand why the price is what it is, but I think it was a marketing failure to do early release on Steam in that manner. Most people are not going to know about the Kickstarter nuances, they are just going to see a $90 game that the developers admit is incomplete.

[Aklyon]

Steam Early Access: good dev idea, terrible PR idea.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

I understand why the price is what it is, but I think it was a marketing failure to do early release on Steam in that manner. Most people are not going to know about the Kickstarter nuances, they are just going to see a $90 game that the developers admit is incomplete.

Yeah, this is my feeling too. I don't think they should have released the game on Early Access if they didn't want a bunch of new people to play the game. Early Access is about getting your Alpha/Beta game noticed and being playtested by a bunch of gamers while you get it finish it to completion. Since this is clearly what they didn't want, they shouldn't have put it on Steam until they were ready for new gamers. Would have saved them a lot of PR trouble. Now, they have a lot of ill conceptions about the game due to it and that's pretty damaging in the long run. I'm really surprised no one over there thought about this but then again...maybe I shouldn't be.