Planetary Annihilation kickstarter

wayne040576

degrassinoel wrote: »

What i think they should or shouldn't have done doesn't mean anything and wont mean anything as i haven't backed them on kickstarter and wont ever pay 83 euro for alpha access to their game or indeed any other game by them or anyone else.
My opinion however is that if they're releasing it as an alpha, they should have given it to the KS backers before anyone else and make it 100% exclusive rather than throwing a 90 quid pricetag onto it and basically saying f*ckyou to everyone that didn't back it.

The amount of people defending their decision is astonishing, i swear if it was EA or Activision or any other AAA games company that did this, there'd be total and utter uproar over it.

Did you back it on kickstarter?

Uproar over what? So you're saying they should have released it on steam but only made it available to those who backed it? In other words no purchase option?

degrassinoel

wayne040576 wrote: »

Uproar over what? So you're saying they should have released it on steam but only made it available to those who backed it? In other words no purchase option?

I dunno what do you think?

gizmo

degrassinoel wrote: »

What i think they should or shouldn't have done doesn't mean anything and wont mean anything as i haven't backed them on kickstarter and wont ever pay 83 euro for alpha access to their game or indeed any other game by them or anyone else.
My opinion however is that if they're releasing it as an alpha, they should have given it to the KS backers before anyone else and make it 100% exclusive rather than throwing a 90 quid pricetag onto it and basically saying f*ckyou to everyone that didn't back it.

They didn't just throw a $90 pricetag onto it, the price matches the tier in the Kickstarter campaign. Those who buy into the alpha on Steam receive exactly the same edition of the game and exactly the same benefits as those that backed them on KS for exactly the same amount of money.

degrassinoel wrote: »

The amount of people defending their decision is astonishing, i swear if it was EA or Activision or any other AAA games company that did this, there'd be total and utter uproar over it.

People are defending it because, quite honestly, they've actually thought about the situation and have gone to the trouble of understanding the reasoning behind it.

It's also completely different from EA or Activision doing this for a number of reasons. For instance, those companies could afford to finance this type of game but for a variety of reasons, have chosen not to. These campaigns are a direct result of that, developers making games they want to make and play and which gamers have been calling for for years. On top of that, the benefits of getting involved at the alpha stage of development would be lost on a publisher-backed project because they would have green lit the initial design and would be more likely to reject feedback unless there was an overwhelmingly negative reaction to certain mechanics and features. Remember, alphas aren't about bug testing, they're about feature testing. This is what makes them more valuable than beta tests.

As an aside, relating to a point in the first paragraph, getting into an alpha isn't meant to be about exclusivity, it's about wanting to give feedback at this stage and help shape the game.

And in case it needs to be said, no, I wouldn't support a Kickstarter project backed by any publisher.

degrassinoel wrote: »

Did you back it on kickstarter?

Nope, I'm not massively into my RTS games. Although I absolutely adored Age of Empires back in the day and would regard Company of Heroes as one of my favourite games. As it happens, I'll probably end up picking PA up at some stage because it looks pretty damn neat.

Azza

degrassinoel wrote:

My opinion however is that if they're releasing it as an alpha, they should have given it to the KS backers before anyone else and make it 100% exclusive rather than throwing a 90 quid pricetag onto it and basically saying f*ckyou to everyone that didn't back it.

The more people in an alpha the better, It makes it easier for the alpha testers to find players to play against, and the developers get more feedback on gameplay and bugs issues that can be changed for the beta and eventual release..

You could just as equally say by not offering people the opportunity to get into the alpha that developers are saying f-you to everyone that didn't back it during the kickstarter.

degrassinoel wrote:

The amount of people defending their decision is astonishing, i swear if it was EA or Activision or any other AAA games company that did this, there'd be total and utter uproar over it.

Did you back it on kickstarter?

If EA did the same thing under the same circumstances people would jump all over them, but if the reasons where the same I'd defend them like I'm defending Ubers decision. I defended EA over ME3 DLC. Also criticized them for the SimCity DRM system.

I didn't back it on kickstarter.

degrassinoel wrote:

Of course that's what companies are here to do, don't condescend dude. Asking for 90 quid for an alpha build is still price gouging and far worse than anything any AAA company has done in the past with prices and DLC.

Sorry just seems like your attitude is completely unreasonable.
Pay alot more (same as earliest backers) get early access.
Wait a while and pay standard price.
Since your not being forced either way what is the problem?

How is it worse. I'd say thousands if not 100's of thousands possibly millions payed €9.99 for the From Ashes DLC. I be amazed if more than a thousand people payed for the early alpha access. EA would have made far far more money from its cheaper DLC than Uber will from this alpha.

degrassinoel

Sorry folks, i'm not multiquoting back and forth to everyone it's Friday afternoon and I simply cba.

So i'll just reply here if it's all the same.

The 90 euro pricetag was their choice. Same as it's anyone's choice to buy or not to buy it.

People are defending the price etc..
If you're trying to say i haven't thought about the justification for it, you're wrong. I understand why, i just don't agree with it, and i think it's an unreasonable price for an alpha state game. I thought that was pretty clear in my previous posts.

RTS'ssss

I'm not big on them either, but i do enjoy them as an escape from whatever else i'm playing. Although i'm very fussy about which RTS i'll play, this was one i had some interested in. Although i didn't back it, as i already mentioned.

Alpha & testers


Yeah i know that if there are more people to test the % of people who actually submit bugs and offer opinions increases too. Asking for 83euro for the privilege of that is still a joke.

My attitude

You see me as being unreasonable because it's my opinion that a company is being unreasonable in it's price structure for an alpha build game. Well that's a discussion forum for you.. we're not all built the same way.

I've lost all intention of ever buying the game tbh. I think it's going to be the vanguard to a bunch of other companies doing the exact same thing and asking for extortionate amounts of money for access to a game which is nowhere near finished. I mean, c'mon.. i could easily buy 2 AAA games for that price and still have enough for busfare home

Azza

degrassinoel wrote:

I've lost all intention of ever buying the game tbh. I think it's going to be the vanguard to a bunch of other companies doing the exact same thing and asking for extortionate amounts of money for access to a game which is nowhere near finished. I mean, c'mon.. i could easily buy 2 AAA games for that price and still have enough for busfare home

You could buy 2 AAA games now, or you could wait until the price comes down for the beta or wait till after release and check out what the reviews and feedback are like and pay the normal price if you think you would like the game, or you could wait longer and pick it up on sale.

wayne040576

degrassinoel wrote: »

I dunno what do you think?

I don't think steam would allow for that type of scenario.
Maybe they should have kept off steam until its release. It would have avoided its wonderful community anyway.

gizmo

degrassinoel wrote: »

The 90 euro pricetag was their choice. Same as it's anyone's choice to buy or not to buy it.

The actual game has a $20 price tag though and that's the important thing. Paying $90 gets you a lot more for your money but will, of course, only be of interest to a specific group of people. Judging by the number of people who backed the game at these tiers there's definitely a lot of those. An important thing to note is that those backers contributed over $1.01m to the overall campaign, that's nearly half of the total amount raised.

degrassinoel wrote: »

People are defending the price etc..
If you're trying to say i haven't thought about the justification for it, you're wrong. I understand why, i just don't agree with it, and i think it's an unreasonable price for an alpha state game. I thought that was pretty clear in my previous posts.

Again, people who pay this kind of money aren't just interested in the game, they feel strongly enough about the project that they're willing to contribute over and above the cost of the game to not only get the extra digital rewards but also, hopefully, devote some time to the alpha phase in order to give valuable feedback to the developers. Again, this is most certainly not for everyone. I just find it odd that the people that are outraged enough to not want to buy it at all anymore are also the ones whom this tier wasn't even aimed at in the first place.

degrassinoel wrote: »

Alpha & testersYeah i know that if there are more people to test the % of people who actually submit bugs and offer opinions increases too. Asking for 83euro for the privilege of that is still a joke.

Again, alpha testing isn't about bugs, it's about testing features. Sure there'll be bugs reported but the ones which are focused on are the ones which are getting in the way of evaluating the existing features correctly. Beta tests, as pointed out, are solely about tracking down bugs once the game is feature complete and as a result, are why they are included in the lower priced tier.

For many fans of games, paying that kind of money to give actual input into the features of a game is worth far more to them than any plastic statue or art book which comes bundled in collectors editions today possibly could.

degrassinoel wrote: »

My attitude You see me as being unreasonable because it's my opinion that a company is being unreasonable in it's price structure for an alpha build game. Well that's a discussion forum for you.. we're not all built the same way.

I've lost all intention of ever buying the game tbh. I think it's going to be the vanguard to a bunch of other companies doing the exact same thing and asking for extortionate amounts of money for access to a game which is nowhere near finished. I mean, c'mon.. i could easily buy 2 AAA games for that price and still have enough for busfare home

I personally feel you're unreasonable because you seem to be ignoring any justification of the pricing while also unwilling to offer your own opinion on what they could have done to make it reasonable in your eyes. Thankfully it's all being done pleasantly which keeps it an interesting (albeit frustrating ) debate.

But yea, as long as these kinds of campaigns exist where every type of gamer is accommodated by the pricing structure I actually hope it does continue. Nothing would please me more than to see some of the great developers out there make the games they really want to make rather and people obviously want than the games they're directed to make based on feedback from limited focus testing and marketing.

degrassinoel

I've already preordered CoH2 i'm not actually planning on spending 90 quid on games this weekend or any weekend tbh, it's just far too expensive.

Even with the retail price at 20 quid for December the company has sealed it's fate with me, i know i said it already, but i wont buy the game at any price based on that alpha pricing. That is being unreasonable, and probably stubborn too, but it's voting with my wallet.

It's hard not to compare one company to another when something like this crops up, and what else is shocking is that price on steam is the highest price i've ever seen for anything there. I'm sure there's countless other titles with bunches of dlc that cost more, and i just haven't seen them. But i doubt they're in alpha either.

I'm sure steam are laughing all the way to the bank with this, and Uber too, regardless of what way people see this, it's a massive pr boost, even if it is a negative one.. though when is pr ever negative if it gets an obscure name into the limelight for 15 minutes?

Overheal

I suppose I can understand this from the perspective of (well, side note, don't piss off your backers because you will undermine Kickstarter) the fact that anybody willing to pay for Alpha will have a vested interest both in the time to play the game and the incentive to provide feedback and otherwise contribute to the games development. for $89 you can get ear-time with the developers and have an impact on game balance and features before the game goes live. That could be kinda cool, me personally I'm just too busy as **** to invest that kind of energy, but I do look forward to playing it when its finalized.

cherryghost

I love the ****storm it kicked up yet it still peaked at number 2 on the Steam charts over the weekend.

Overheal

because its a badass concept for a game and it will be in the hall of fame for years to come.

Yakult

Looks like it will be a great game, but **** me if I paying €82. I can wait.

synesthesia

number 2 ! ahahah incredible after such fuss

price aside, i really think it is better to wait at least for the beta ... a lot of features are locked still ...

The_Valeyard

synesthesia wrote: »

number 2 ! ahahah incredible after such fuss

price aside, i really think it is better to wait at least for the beta ... a lot of features are locked still ...

Unless I am wrong, isnt the AI non responsive in the Alpha, as in you can just build a small base, explore a world, find an enemy 'base' (few turrets and bots) and that's all at the moment. But should be a class game when finished. The idea of the galactic war map is pretty cool.

platinums

I was really looking forward to this one, If I was in their shoes I would be charging the same amount and ROFL'ing all the way to the bank fair dues to them.
Im going to keep the €82 warm for them in my pocket, so warm it will never want to leave...

TheDoc

Knew there would be a thread here about this

Followed the project mildly through kickstarter, and saw today the pricing on steam.

Alot of tears over nothing really, nobody is forcing you to get involved. Think people are expecting that they should be getting the access for nothing?

Companies are companies, Indie, sole trader, large corps, they need to generate revenue, or their projects won't get off the ground.

We are in a new age of media and creation. Investors arnt willing to splash big bucks on a wild bet, hence why these kickstarters are succesfull. If there is a target audience, that is a niche want it, let them pay for it to get it.

I don tsee what the outrage is. I'm interested in the game, but wasn't so overly interested that I supported. My interest has grown, but not to the point I'll spend €80 on it.

It's a weird concept and essentially an ambitous project, no doubt will have major flaws, bugs and problems as with alot of these types of projects. I'll be waiting a good while after release to see what the general feeling is

Genghiz Cohen

Is there any actual gameplay that sets this apart from other RTS games?
I'd love the asteroid superweapons, but I dont know if that will ever work in a game.

Overheal

Genghiz Cohen wrote: »

Is there any actual gameplay that sets this apart from other RTS games?

..Does it need to?

Genghiz Cohen

Well, yes.
If it's going to be a standard run of the mill RTS, why would I bother playing it? I could go get Supreme Commander or Starcraft or something instead.

Overheal

On a not entirely unrelated note, I'm really craving a Five Guys burger.

They don't do anything fancy. They don't try to reinvent the wheel. They just make a really damn legitimate, proper, delicious hamburger.

I really don't have a problem with PA if all it does is classic RTS scaled back to interstellar. SoaSE kinda did this, but with spaceships, and it really wasn't nearly as Meta as it could have been.

Genghiz Cohen

Overheal wrote: »

On a not entirely unrelated note, I'm really craving a Five Guys burger.

They don't do anything fancy. They don't try to reinvent the wheel. They just make a really damn legitimate, proper, delicious hamburger.

I really don't have a problem with PA if all it does is classic RTS scaled back to interstellar. SoaSE kinda did this, but with spaceships, and it really wasn't nearly as Meta as it could have been.

Sins was really slow though. I liked it, but each match was too much of a time commitment.

Overheal

conversely Starcraft always feels too rampant to me.

synesthesia

Project Update #30: Planetary Annihilation

We have released approximately 11 builds in the just over two weeks Alpha has been going now, and in that time, we've seen a lot of features come online, performance improve quite a bit, and most importantly, have stable clients for all our supported platforms! As of this morning, in addition to Linux and Win 64 being pretty solid, we now have stable Mac OS/X 10.7+ builds, as well as Win 32 builds for Vista, Win 7 & Win 8.

For more details, please go here:

http://www.uberent.com/pa/2013/06/26/mac-and-win-32-play-now-on-alpha/

synesthesia

ALPHA ACCESS – PRICE DROP!
Planetary Annihilation is about to enter the third month of being in the hands of our fans, with just about one month left in our alpha period. In that time, we have already seen the following core features come online since the first alpha build:

Windows 64 & 32 bit, Mac OS/X and Linux platforms all playable
Increased max game size from 4 players to a max of 10 in team gameplay. This will continue to increase as we build and optimize.
Planet Editor and Playable Custom Planets
Second commander added, with many more to be viewable and playable in game in the coming months
AI – Still a work in progress, but it will continue to grow!
First pass of matchmaking system – will continue to grow and evolve as we go
More general gameplay improvements than can be easily detailed in what is supposed to be a short update!
Significant enhancements to user feedback
Wide range of performance improvements, and we’re not even focused on that yet!
The remarkable thing about this list is it only touches on the actual changes in the build since the original alpha build. On the back end, a huge amount of work has been ongoing for reconnaissance, server technology, supporting multiple simultaneous celestial bodies (multi planet wars), and even larger play sessions, with the ultimate goal of 40 person drop in/drop out games that could span days.

With this in mind, and to make it easier to get in to the alpha who have been waiting patiently, we are dropping the price of the Galactic Edition to $70 USD. We are almost two thirds of the way through the alpha period, so we decided to drop two thirds off the alpha premium. This means if you were a beta player and want instant access, you can go our website and upgrade for $10. If you had a retail copy, you can upgrade for $30. Steam Early Access price is also dropping to $70!

The other big announcement is: due to more flexibility with our manufacturing now, we are bringing back the Cosmic Collector’s Edition of PA. It’s the same price as before, and includes all the same bonuses as before, including the collector’s edition box, and we will leave it available for sale for as long as possible. If you bought any other version through us, you can upgrade it the same as before.

We are excited about the current state of the game, and even more excited about the things to come soon. Beta is getting close, and with it, a huge number of new players who will be joining in the war for galactic supremacy, and helping us to mold the next generation of massive scale real time strategy gaming.

Head to http://store.uberent.com now to see the updated pricing, and if you’ve already purchased, login and select the “Upgrade” button to get access now!

Overheal

Title has now entered Beta status.

New price is $59.99 on Steam, though launch price and previous bonus tiers are still available from the uberent store

Sephiroth_dude

Anyone in beta?whats it like?

Zillah

I've learned the hard way to avoid betas. I'm really trying to resist diving in too soon. I'd love to hear opinions on whether it's good enough to get into now or if I should wait.

synesthesia

It's good, but wait ... there is a lot of things not in yet, even in Beta.

Genghiz Cohen

Plus there is no advantage to buying in now, seeing as the price is coming down.
I'd happily put up with bugs and lack of content if the game were priced to reflect that.