RTS Planetary Annihilation: Titans Released

[Astral Rag]

No proper single-player campaign? No thanks, maybe when it's actually finished and in a $1 bundle a few years from now.

 

[Baron Dupek]

You mean few months? Because there is some games that were kicked to the bundle pit, after few months, few weeks or even in alpha/beta state, in Early Access or not.
So if the game clung really badly then we may enjoy another cheap copy of Chris Taylor's masterpiece.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.polygon.com/2014/9/10/6131069/kickstarters-planetary-annihilation-uber

How some $1,000 backers of this gaming Kickstarter made their money back, and more

Planetary Annihilation brought in $2.2 million in Kickstarter funding for Uber Entertainment, and the full game has now been released after a two-year development cycle.

This is one of the largest Kickstarter campaigns in gaming, and the team seems to have had fun experimenting with the world of both crowdfunding and Early Access.

One such experiment is already paying off, for both the company and those that backed the game at the higher levels. The players who helped to create custom units in the game are now seeing their units sold in the game’s storefront, and they’re making money from the transactions. Some backers have actually recouped the entirety of their $1,000 backing level, and are now making a profit.

HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

The original plan was much more basic. "Working with you, we'll design and conceive of the ideal commander to best represent you on the field of battle. You send us some source inspiration and we’ll make it look cool," the $1,000 backing level stated on the original campaign.

Ninety-one people backed at this level, and that meant 91 custom units had to be made. The team needed to plan ahead, and so they created three basic designs for the Commander character, each one with a specific look and skeleton. The backers would then pick one they liked, fill out a survey, and send in any sketches or source material they wanted the artist to use for inspiration.

There were a few people who ignored the basic instructions, but overall the process went smoothly. "Almost everyone got it," Adam Overton, the executive producer of the game told Polygon. "They would sketch things, and with a little feedback they would be in good shape."

Here's an example of the source material sent in by one backer, using a free 3D program and an iPad. It's rough, but it gives you some idea of what they were going for.

The artists at Uber Entertainment took that inspiration and designed a unit. They sent the backer a wireframe model first for their approval, and then moved ahead with the final textures and animation.

So during development the units were created, and they looked great. The team was happy, the artists were happy and the backers got to say they helped create a unit for a major video game. Now the team at Uber had piles of interesting, custom characters that would be added to the game. Maybe they could sell them to other fans?

THE BACKERS ARE CUT IN

"We didn’t do it on purpose. It was never our plan to do this thing," Overton explained. "We just got to the point where we thought the Commanders were pretty nice, and we could sell them."

"We did have people sign a contract, because it wasn’t part of the initial deal," he continued. "We actually asked permission. We said would you like us to sell your commander, and we’ll give you a portion of the proceeds?" Almost everyone said yes.

So the units were put for sale, with some going for as little as $5 to $10 for a limited time, and others for $10 to $15. Some really good-looking units were sold for as much as $25. These characters are cosmetic, and don't give any other bonuses to the purchaser.

"We don’t really know how to price these things, actually," Overton said. "We just kind of threw some numbers up like ‘I really like this one, I would pay this much for that! Bam!’ That’s kind of how we did it. We didn’t think about it too hard."

The team wouldn’t confirm the percentage split between Uber and each Kickstarter backer, but Polygon was told the backer received a "substantial" amount of the sale price of each unit sold.

"We have people who have gotten four digit recoup already. We’ve already passed that. We had people who passed that four digit mark before the game was officially launched," Overton said. In other words, some backers have already made back their $1,000, and are now making a profit on their backing of the game.

The backers are paid quarterly, and at least $300 must be made before a check is cut. If it’s under that amount, it simply rolls over until $300 is made. The most popular units inspired by the designs of each backer will earn that backer checks as long as the game is supported. Kickstarter is never an investment, but in this particular situation there are some backers who will see a healthy return on their $1,000 support.

And that's what's been guided these decision at Uber. "We want to make sure the backers feel good. That’s super-important," Overton said. "The backers should feel great."

 

[Infinitron]

Eurogamer review: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-09-16-planetary-annihilation-review

Excerpt:

Where Planetary Annihilation started to lose me is the instant the game began getting tougher. As you'd imagine, I started wanting to learn the correct answer to what factory to build first, and which of the four unit types to build from any given factory, and in what combination. I wasn't expecting StarCraft-like levels of balance, but I wanted to learn the point of all these toys. In what situations should you choose robot factories over vehicles? The seas, when they appeared, always seemed peculiarly small. Why the sprawling naval tech tree? What good are flamethrower tanks? When's it worth building base defences when the enemy can approach from anywhere?

You know what I think is next? The option to select your units, bases, even planets and toggle AI on and off.

These are questions with one ugly answer. There are two games tucked away in Planetary Annihilation. The colourful one comprising its opening hour, full of variety and promise, and what it actually is: players racing to draw the quickest, ugliest lines through all of its content.

Utilising the game's secret third resource of clicks-per-minute, you want to get your economy up and running as fast as possible (pros recommend using mod assistance to smooth out the game's interface), first producing fabricators and then sending them roaming across the planet to metal extractors as fast as possible. Meanwhile, you want to construct factory after factory, spewing out tanks, and with any mental faculties you have left you'll want to be dispatching tanks around the world to crush any and all metal extractors and fabricators you find. Naval units are almost useless, while planes can be lethal. Advanced tech can be safely ignored until you're involved in the business of harassing your opponent's own factory construction. Altogether it's a tense but ultimately exhausting exercise in micromanagement, and compares unfavourably with other modern RTS games in terms of breadth and depth.

Things are most awkward of all in Planetary Annihilation's own personal new frontier: the additional dimension of interstellar combat. Spacecraft have by far the least variety of any unit type, and ordering them around the solar system is the most taxing and least enjoyable aspect of the game. There's no large-scale transport unit, either, so in any single-player campaign games without advanced space tech (with which you could build a teleporter from orbit), launching a planetary invasion means loading a crowd of units into an equally sized fleet of single-unit transport craft. A logistical operation with all the appeal of counting sand.

My commander stuck in a trench, attaining a hierarchical position above ASIMO but beneath the Mars Rover.

All of which is an underwhelming challenge to try and master and it's unpleasant to be on the receiving end of it, with tiny little groups of units ceaselessly raiding your handiwork. After being burned once when the AI took out my main power plant, I got into the habit of having fabricators building an unending string of power plants on multiple planets, just so my teleporters and factories would stay online. The entire game is like this. Strategy takes a backseat to speed, efficiency and swarming your opponents.

None of which is inherently terrible, and a lot of people will look past this for the chance to simply experience an epic 5v5 game, or a similarly mad 2v2v2v2v2v2v2. But it's still a style of play that massively limits Planetary Annihilation's appeal even before you get into the comparatively light single-player component and the occasional bug. I had matches where the AI stopped after building a couple of structures, as well as one amazing game where my chosen spawn point dropped my proud commander in an inescapable canyon.

Don't get me wrong. I do still think that featuring a Death Star in an RTS is a fantastic achievement. I just wish they'd also included something worth fighting for.

6/10

 

[Johannes]

The reviewer is clearly p. clueless in RTS (as are most gaymers), but it does strongly suggest that the game is the clusterfuck I kinda expected for a long time. The designers clearly don't have a proper grasp of how an RTS is supposed to play, like the transports example shows, they have no clue about proper pacing and didn't manage to make the space aspect properly dynamic.


Also why have you changed my thread's title? If you want a new title start your own one. This was never meant to be a megathread, fuck off. Or edit the post-release posts to be a thread of their own which makes 100 times more sense.

 

[Destroid]

The reviewer is clearly p. clueless in RTS (as are most gaymers), but it does strongly suggest that the game is the clusterfuck I kinda expected for a long time. The designers clearly don't have a proper grasp of how an RTS is supposed to play, like the transports example shows, they have no clue about proper pacing and didn't manage to make the space aspect properly dynamic.

Seems pretty unlikely considering several senior staff on this project also have experience on TA and supcom. They should at least be able to re-implement that style of RTS to a decent level of quality, but I haven't played PA.

 

[Infinitron]

RPS review is more positive: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/09/17/planetary-annihilation-review/

Planetary Annihilation is a slick, modernised RTS, engineered from the ground up to appeal to the fast-paced, competitive, hotkey-loving esports crowd. For people like me, it is a bruising gauntlet of defeat. But even I can see the appeal. Putting aside the fact that to play online you need a quad-core processor instead of a brain, the game itself has a huge amont of character. Even if it doesn’t supplant StarCraft as the RTS du jour, I’m confident it’ll attract a sizeable following. The ‘story’ of Planetary Annihilation’s universe is that humans have gone extinct and self-replicating robots have woken up to carry on their endless war against one another. Judging from the multiplayer servers, that seems about right.

 

[Ashery]

More positive, maybe, but it still completely turned me off of ever picking up the game.

 

[DeepOcean]

RPS review made it sound fun but lacking handholding, what will scare some people, I will certainly buy it. Specially liked the bit where the Ai can make newbies cry a massive butthurt, this will certainly make the skirmish mode fun and be a somewhat decent training to online.

 

[Astral Rag]

4.8/10 from ign, maybe it's a decent game after all.

 

[Angthoron]

4.8/10 from ign, maybe it's a decent game after all.

Sadly no.

 

[Volrath]

RPS review is more positive: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/09/17/planetary-annihilation-review/

Planetary Annihilation is a slick, modernised RTS, engineered from the ground up to appeal to the fast-paced, competitive, hotkey-loving esports crowd. For people like me, it is a bruising gauntlet of defeat. But even I can see the appeal. Putting aside the fact that to play online you need a quad-core processor instead of a brain, the game itself has a huge amont of character. Even if it doesn’t supplant StarCraft as the RTS du jour, I’m confident it’ll attract a sizeable following. The ‘story’ of Planetary Annihilation’s universe is that humans have gone extinct and self-replicating robots have woken up to carry on their endless war against one another. Judging from the multiplayer servers, that seems about right.

How much fucking can you get?

 

[AMG]

The game was destined(heh) to get shredded in reviews. Most people aren't good at multitasking and can get overwhelmed when playing regular RTS.
Now tell somebody who struggles to control his army and build stuff at the same time in Starcraft, to do it on 3 maps at the same time. Also because the playfield is a sphere you can get attacked for anywhere, and at any time you can only see 1/3 of a given map. Usually you will hear "Fuck it, I thought this is Command and Conquer not Air Trafic Cotroller Simulator".
Compounded by esentially no single player experience and no matchmaking this game offers nothing for more casual folks.

 

[skuphundaku]

I think that the lack of single player is PA's biggest drawback. If it had at least a single player campaign, things would have been very different, especially when it comes to reviews.

 

[Volrath]

All I wanted was a TA clone. That's all I fucking wanted...

Not some shitty Starcraft 2 rip-off. Fuck Starcraft, seriously fuck that game for fucking up the RTS genre as we knew it.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAArrggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhh

 

[Johannes]

All I wanted was a TA clone. That's all I fucking wanted...

Not some shitty Starcraft 2 rip-off. Fuck Starcraft, seriously fuck that game for fucking up the RTS genre as we knew it.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAArrggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhh

Um, what does this game have to do with Starcrap 2

 

[Chef_Hathaway]

Nothing, really. It's a really cool expanded TA/SupCom concept with less than stellar execution right now.

 

[Destroid]

I am acquainted with someone who got hired by them recently to do design on singleplayer so it should be coming sooner or later.

 

[Galdred]

The reviewer is clearly p. clueless in RTS (as are most gaymers), but it does strongly suggest that the game is the clusterfuck I kinda expected for a long time. The designers clearly don't have a proper grasp of how an RTS is supposed to play, like the transports example shows, they have no clue about proper pacing and didn't manage to make the space aspect properly dynamic.


Also why have you changed my thread's title? If you want a new title start your own one. This was never meant to be a megathread, fuck off. Or edit the post-release posts to be a thread of their own which makes 100 times more sense.

After reading the comments section of the Eurogamer review, the reviewer appears really clueless indeed :
All the interface problems he underlines would be non issue had he used the area command (from reading the comments, the area command works as follow :
You Right click drag mouse, and all the units carry the order on the whole area : so you can order your transports to area load your whole army with ctrl click + RightClick drag around the area where the army is waiting for embarkation, and it's done.
Or you order your army to area attack the whole enemy base, and they won't stop until all the units and buildings in the area are down.
I cannot comment much on the feature, as I haven't played the game, but this seems like a great advance in RTS UI design, and it underlines the little efforts the reviewers put in their reviews.

 

[sser]

Not that I think one way or the other about this game, but the RTS genre was nearly dead for awhile there and it has been obvious that reviewers' abilities to talk about the genre went to the grave with it.

Thinking these people who review Gone Home and Fez could review an RTS is like asking a new risen zombie to describe the taste of apple pie.

 

[Astral Rag]

On sale for €14 atm

http://store.steampowered.com/app/233250/

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Saw sale, was thinking about buying...

May wait until it's $5.

 

[Kane]

The designers clearly don't have a proper grasp of how an RTS is supposed to play,

If I could be arsed I'd search for my post where I say that 3D maps in RTS are idiotic. Yes, Uber has no clue how RTS work. But that's not surprising, their other games are shite aswell.

Planetary Annihilation is a slick, modernised RTS, engineered from the ground up to appeal to the fast-paced, competitive, hotkey-loving esports crowd.

I wish it was; unfortunately the opposite is true: Confusing interface, no matchmaking, no ladders, no LAN, no anything that could get competition going. But it has Twitch integration.

 

[Destroid]

Perhaps they have realised this, their new kickstarter project claims to follow the pacing of a CnC game rather than that of a game in the TA tradition.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...me-by-uber-planetary-annihilation-devs.94512/

 

[Johannes]

Perhaps they have realised this, their new kickstarter project claims to follow the pacing of a CnC game rather than that of a game in the TA tradition.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...me-by-uber-planetary-annihilation-devs.94512/

What is the pacing of a game "in the TA tradition", though? TA itself is one thing, but the SupComs have quite a different pacing.