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Planetary Annnihilation Titans

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8 years ago
http://store.steampowered.com/app/386070

Standalone expansion for PA. $14 for those who have the original game, free for kickstarter backers of the original game. Adds Titans (Experimentals/Striders) and 16 other new units, along with a proper tutorial, a new game mode, better terrain, and numerous balance changes.
+1 / -0

8 years ago
Gimmickary Annihilation: Tek2Krog

UI still sucks but I guess it's not what you sell to porcnabs.
+2 / -0
1st thanks for the thread
2nd do you feel screwed over? Do you think this is just a paid patch? I would love an insight from PA community since so far I have found out that everybody is mad about the fact that Titans exist as a standalone.
+4 / -0

8 years ago
I'm getting it for free because I'm in a tournament that the devs cooperated with the tourney organizers on, but overall the PA community thinks that this is entirely good. If this nets Uber more money so that they can keep working on the game, that's awesome. It's only $14 and if you're going to get 14 hours of additional playtime out of it, then it's probably worth it.

In terms of modding possibilities several of the things that they're adding are very exciting.

21 units is more units than were added by most expansions for 90s RTS games back when these things were a thing (Core Contingency aside, but TA was really something different) and the price point to existing owners is fairly low.
+0 / -0
I'll give it a shot, I have it for free from KS anyway, so the only cost is time. I'm skeptical I'll change my mind on it, though, given that mass-force RTS games aren't really my style. I play Zero-K because it lies in the middle region of RTS scale, while also providing RTT-level (or at least Myth-level) unit control possibilities.
+1 / -0

8 years ago
quote:
21 units is more units than were added by most expansions for 90s RTS games back when these things were a thing

Yeah, back in the day people knew how to make units unique.
+1 / -0
A lot of people have lots of issues with the whole thing it seems. I have seen angry mobs on reddit and Steam forums saying that it is a paid patch etc (considering how cash grabbing Uber was in the past).

- the early access guys are being screwed over. They have donated the same amount of money for Uber to kick off yet... they don't get to enjoy the expansion for free.

- expansion is really pricey. Compare it to massive expansions EU IV style. Even they cost only 10 Eu not 15. That is part of because it is standalone so it is expansion+base. It would be nice if PA owners could get a perma discount on the TITANS then it would be all sorted out and people would be genuinely happy about the state of things. It also does not have THAT much content in it either.

Uber is uber bad at consumer managment:
1st they release an unfinished game with showing no prospects on fixing it
then they announce a kickstarter campaign just after the release
and then suddenly become quiet about all the work they are doing leaving people outside their forums that the game is a dead fish
now this crap...

People (like me) who bought PA beforehand feel screwed over because they paid the full price and now have to pay again for expansion. So the standard game is practically useless and inferior in every possible way now. I completely get that but I also understand why they did it: Steam reviews (that were totally justified imo btw).
+2 / -0

8 years ago
Some of the steam reviews were no doubt justified when they were made, but over time they've gotten more and more depracated. Other than some additional singleplayer work, pretty much every kickstarter promise has been fulfilled at this point.

The post-release quiet was only for one month post launch. We've been getting more and more updates since then.

Remember, if you're taking the opportunity to try PA again, don't forget to download PAMM so that you can get the line move mod (I believe it's called "Cover That Line").

I believe Steam recommended that they make the discount for original owners temporary.
+0 / -0

8 years ago
Do you even need line move in PA? Does positioning and micro matter that much?

I guess a good concave is always a good concave though.
+0 / -0

8 years ago
Generally not as much, there's no such thing as blocking LoS and there are fewer AoE weapons. Playing my Galactic Annihilation mod (Currently obsolete if you have Titans, which does much the same things) it was more important, but not required.
+0 / -0
With projectile dodging, shot blocking, the importance of perfect kiting and the tightly controlled range differences needed to pull this off, as well as the ubiquity of AoE weapons and the importance of the Riot unit, line move is vital.

But that's really the things that makes ZK different from other TA games, we make maximum use of the physics engine and the physical nature of our units, weapons and projectiles. I always thought it was kind of a tragedy to physically simulate your projectiles and then make that irrelevant by having your battles just swarms of units chewing into eachother: Your physics engine then is just serving as random noise.
+5 / -0
quote:
I believe Steam recommended that they make the discount for original owners temporary.

I hardly believe that any Steam executive would suggest this. Sure there was a temporal 66% discount at the day of release... but then the expansion was not announced anywhere and not everybody checks Uber forums, reddit or other media sources every day. Apparently I cannot distinguish October from August :|

quote:
Some of the steam reviews were no doubt justified when they were made, but over time they've gotten more and more depracated.

Well perhaps that's because the game was launched in incomplete state? Perhaps because it was absolutely not functional in the first 3 weeks after release because the game was streamed to your computer from their machine and required internet connection at all times? People don't come back when they see this sort of mess + no response from the developer. Especially that the game did not have any super interesting mechanics besides the interplanetary warfare which is cool but not super interesting depth wise (at least in the vanilla game).

quote:
The post-release quiet was only for one month post launch. We've been getting more and more updates since then.

That is more than enough to set up a super bad impression after totally botched launch.

Line move is not that big of the deal in some games. For example in NOTA almost every unit shoots above each other and there is barely any aoe so blobbing is not that punished at all even though the linemove is availbe (because Spring) it might as well have not been.

All in all I do think that Uber receives unnecessary hate, but then it is a result of their own actions and massive amount of let down of what PA could have been but is not.
+3 / -0
quote:
I always thought it was kind of a tragedy to physically simulate your projectiles and then make that irrelevant by having your battles just swarms of units chewing into eachother: Your physics engine then is just serving as random noise.

I actually found OTA seemed to allow for physics to matter somewhat, but I definitely felt this way about SupCom, so much so that I had to think up a term to describe it (mechanical dissonance). I kinda respect that PA doesn't have much physics stuff going on, since it wouldn't serve the design at all.

As for USrankStuart98's comments, speaking as an Monday Night Combat(PC only, mind) and Super Monday Night Combat player, the disappointment isn't just with PA or the Kickstarter goals being delayed, but that there has never been good communication. MNC got a decent amount of post-launch support, then nothing was heard. Then SMNC suddenly shows up, seems to do okay but has some design issues (which MNC didn't have, due to SMNC having a much more powerful levelling system), gets a year's worth of support with no indication that the game is getting shelved. There was even a whole new game mode added a couple months before support stopped. Then PA gets the Kickstarter, and all of a sudden people go "So that's who Uber has been this whole time!" and throws a few million dollars at them, then the game comes, isn't quite what was in the pitch, and with yet another round of no communication and a seemingly dead game until the Galactic War patches people figure it's another MNC/SMNC situation. The Human Resources Kickstarter didn't help either (though I think they should have started with that instead of PA, since they'd probably have had a more solid and viscerally engaging design than PA had, due to the scale), as that prompted more concerns that PA would be abandoned like SMNC was.

All in all, it wasn't just PA, it was a repeated pattern of silence, then sudden halts in support followed by sudden game announcements that led to the overall distrust of Uber. The high cost of PA in Kickstarter and Early Access, along with the relatively high character prices in SMNC, does not help the optics of the cost of Titans either.

I wouldn't be surprised if Xbox MNC players (the original ones) were pissed off about support for that when the PC version was released, but I wasn't there.
+4 / -0

8 years ago
quote:
repeated pattern of silence, then sudden halts in support followed by sudden game announcements

Is that surprising? Draining the suckers who keep throwing money at you because of hype and then moving on is much more profitable than actually making sure your game is good.
+0 / -0
8 years ago
Oh crap CArankAdminShadowfury333 don't even let me started on MNC and SMNC.
Now you have just made me sad to be completely honest.

quote:
Is that surprising? Draining the suckers who keep throwing money at you because of hype and then moving on is much more profitable than actually making sure your game is good.

Yes Sprung because both games were quite good albeit the lack of support for the SMNC was understandable since there was barely anybody playing it.
+1 / -0

8 years ago
I don't like Planetary Annihilation. End of story!
+1 / -0
8 years ago
So far PA doesn't really deserve a better name than SupCom 2 or TA:Kingdoms, it has major problems in its core designs, no amount of new units would gonna fix that.
+0 / -0
There are things you should know.

Original PA now can't be bought. Uber remove it. But still you can buy dlc (commander models and soundtrack).
http://store.steampowered.com/app/233250/
So whatever Uber told they most likely going to abandon original PA.

Also expansion discount for orignal owners going to expire after month.

So hatred can be easily explained.
+1 / -0

8 years ago
This is why they made Titans a new game:

+6 / -0

8 years ago
quote:

I always thought it was kind of a tragedy to physically simulate your projectiles and then make that irrelevant by having your battles just swarms of units chewing into eachother: Your physics engine then is just serving as random noise.

Amen!
It would seem that like good AI, actually using physics engine for gameplay is too hard for most developers to be worth it :
http://forums.gearboxsoftware.com/t/ballistics-in-video-games/143178
+0 / -0
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