Planetary Annihilation: Total Annihilation IN SPACE

[eRe4s3r]

Yeah the fun part is that they (Arcen) removed a major usability feature imo (toggle group move for the selection) and then somehow put it in sub-menus and global toggles, but I don't want global toggles, I want to press an interface button and my selection sticks to group move...

Just goes to show that UI can also be broken by "improvement". In the Unity version I am actually not happy about a lot of things, the lack of the minimap for one, and the HORRIBLE replacement....  I don't even understand why this could not have stayed in as an option.... oh well

[doctorfrog]

Yeah the fun part is that they (Arcen) removed a major usability feature imo (toggle group move for the selection) and then somehow put it in sub-menus and global toggles, but I don't want global toggles, I want to press an interface button and my selection sticks to group move...

Just goes to show that UI can also be broken by "improvement". In the Unity version I am actually not happy about a lot of things, the lack of the minimap for one, and the HORRIBLE replacement....  I don't even understand why this could not have stayed in as an option.... oh well

I would pay extra money to get the minimap back. And line-place for mines is so ugly. Mass mine placement in general is simply awful (CTRL and ALT Click). Line-place shouldn't even be necessary, it's a bandage for a feature that's out of tune.

Wait, this isn't the UI thread. But we have a UI improvement effort that's spooling up, hopefully a few of my pet issues make it in

[Cyborg]

Maybe it's just the realization that you need to play the game with hotkeys memorized because the interface cannot do it all. Good or bad, just an observation.

[Aklyon]

October 9th.

[keith.lamothe]

October 9th.

Yep, just got that in my email.  Glad to hear it

[Wingflier]

Oh, ye of little faith.

[chemical_art]

If we live in age where delievering a key feature a month late is considered a successful kickstarter, it seems i shouldnt support any.

[Aklyon]

Honestly its seems like 'successful kickstarter' and 'actually got done what it proposed' are on seperate scales at this point. People huzzah when one finishes and then wait in an arbitrary mood for the next one that makes the news because it successfully failed.

[Mánagarmr]

If we live in age where delievering a key feature a month late is considered a successful kickstarter, it seems i shouldnt support any.

This pretty much. I find the fact that they are releasing it this late to be a huge fail on their part. That said, I'm grateful it's there at all.

[keith.lamothe]

It's entirely fair for each of you to look at the result of this and other kickstarters and decide it's not something you want to put money into.  But personally I don't see anything about how the PA product turned out that would prevent me from further backing.

They messed up in a ton of ways, sure, and personally I'm disappointed in how it went.  But I'm happy to help them keep trying to make good games. 

Certainly, Arcen has greatly benefited from folks' willingness to look past an iffily-executed product or two (or three, or...) and continue to support our efforts.  Uber doesn't seem as customer-oriented as us (imo), but not to a deal-breaking degree.

[Wingflier]

Honestly, whether they released it in September and called it the "finished product", or kept in beta for another month, just to release "the finished" product in early October with the offline/LAN support, I see no real difference between the two. The LAN support would have taken just as much time either way, so really the only difference was psychological or arbitrary in the end. They should have released "the finished product" with all the features they promised, but once again, it still would have taken the same amount of time, and there was no real benefits to the players for them to wait that extra month (that I can think of).

Overall, I've been very impressed with them, and will most likely drop $20 into their next game. I would give more but I just don't have that much money right now, and I've realized that I just don't care about the early alpha and beta privileges. I usually wait for the full release anyway before I really invest my time and energy into it. Sometimes betas can be really disappointing.

In the end though, I think of PA's "final product" to be a bit of a misnomer anyway. Uber is obviously a company that continues to support and update their games over time, as they have with Monday Night Combat, in the same way that Arcen does with AI War and many of their games. "Final product", in my opinion, is when the company has died or when the developers no longer exist anymore and even then, the ease of the game's moddability would give TA fans new material to enjoy for decades to come.

[keith.lamothe]

The distinction may be psychological or arbitrary, as with a number of previous flubs (like putting it on steam when they still weren't comfortable pricing it lower than $80 or whatever it was at the time, due to what the backers paid).  But those kinds of psychological and arbitrary distinctions are what largely form an audience's impressions of a company and/or product.  I'm not saying that's a good thing.  Or really a bad thing.  Just a thing, that all developers (Arcen included) need to bear in mind.

It's been a pretty rocky ride PR-wise, and I hope they'll put more effort into smoothing that out in the future.

[Wingflier]

I guess my point is that PR-related decisions don't really bother me, as long as they aren't intentionally screwing the customer over, which in this case, I can see no evidence of foul play. I think they just made a string of questionable decisions that they'll refrain from making in the future, as most indie developers do in some way or another, in spite of their good intentions. As an example, they aren't even promising any sort of offline-LAN option for their new game, which is a good start. I'm very impressed with the "final product" of their first big title, and am excited to see what else they have in store. I have a very good feeling about the future of this game and this company, we'll see how it turns out.

[eRe4s3r]

if a high ranking decision leads to a feature not being in that KS backers expected then that is imo "intentionally screwing a customer over"

After all, when a KS happens to succeed all those people are your customers. And Uber has particularly a REALLY bad customer communication. They do not visit their own forums or if they do, they do not say anything in them. That is hugely annoying, and imo really bad behavior.

And their next game is gonna use the same system as PA.. which means no sale, and no support from my end. PlayFab is annoying, no match-making and useless and even worse, pointless. Playfab does NOTHING of use for mp gamers, people had to hack together their own match-making for PA after all.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

PlayFab is annoying, no match-making and useless and even worse, pointless. Playfab does NOTHING of use for mp gamers, people had to hack together their own match-making for PA after all.

But it is saving them money...or something.... /sarcasm