Planetary Anhilation - Predictions

[ColonelSheppard]

This is how it works:

- You have a maximum of 100 words to say what you think how PA will go.
- You only are allowed to make one post.
- You may not answer to any previous post.

At some point i will ask a mod to close this thread and then we will open it like a timebox after some months. We had something like this for SupCom2 in the insidesupcom forum, was pretty fun.
I count on you to really only make ONE post, and keep on the 120 words limit. (ofc if you havee 101 no matter, no whole books, you know what i mean)

Mine:
PA will come out and there will be two kinds of people: The ones who appreciate it. And the ones who were still waiting for FA2 (and did not listen at any point). After a few days people will rage about serverlags and big bugs. (This is unpreventable in a game that was produced so fast). After 1 month, most of the bugs will be fixed, and people will noticed how awesome PA is, this hype will last for 2 months after that PA will go down slowly. Within one year, PA will be replaced by something else. If you are negative you can be suprised positivly.

[eXcalibur]

PA alpha: nothing happens.

pa beta: there will be youtube videos...a lot of people get nervous and cannot await the release.

pa launch: everybody wants to play it. faf users go down by 50%.

1 year later: some people stick with pa, but most have realized that the gameplay of pa is just too simple and boring and return to faf (faf users increased again by 30%)

3-5 years later: pa gameplay has become more complex and 2-4 addons (cost money again) have been released. The most played mod is a supcom-mod (which gameplay is still simpler than faf gameplay). Faf users are 30-50% from nowadays. pa users are 100-500% of faf users.

[asdfmovie]

Release : PA draws people who enjoy clay-like graphics ( ala team fortress two ). Draws a substantial amount of supcom lovers and the old fuddy duddies in FAF twiddling their thumbs for a sup-com like game

Two weeks in: A small fiasco starts as people get confused in the campaign over controlling different armies on different planets. Even more so in multi where games probably stick to one planet, at most two. Multi is an utter mash up and people on the forums whine and complain about how asteroid control is difficult and OP.

Four weeks in : Things begin to settle down. Multiplayer is active and most people get the hang of it, albeit slowly. People are still confused on some level though. New players are attracted to the grand setting and put off by its seeming difficulty

One month in : The first major patch. I see major trimming ahead.....

[MushrooMars]

Alpha and Beta: Bugs and shit. People will complain about the bugs and how Unit X is overpowered because it counters units Z, W and F. Game may loose some traction because people can't be at the least bit optimistic. Those guys who backed just because of OMFG XBOXHUEG EXPLODESIONS will leave if they are in the beta, and if not, will leave when they realize the game actually requires a tad bit if thinking.

Release: TA, SupCom fans come out of the woodwork and either criticize/endorse the game's lack/abundance of complexity and innovation. Casual players will most likely appreciate the game no matter what. Mods will start coming out, and custom maps.

A few months later: If the game is good, competitive, and fun off the bat, the game will snowball into an RTS phenomenon and come close to rivaling Starcraft in its popularity, similarly to the way TF2 dethroned CoD. If the game has a few inherent flaws, they will have been fixed by now. It will not gain critical attention, but it will most certainly be better than SupCom2.

A year later: Assuming the game is good, the community/playerbase has settled at a slow climb now, and mod developers have put out some major shit (Blackops team has ported their mod, made a bunch of new units/a custom faction, Nomads team probably has 1-2 custom factions out by now). Leagues and clans have formed, and competitive gameplay is fun, open and supported. If the game's bugs and imbalances still haven't been fixed by now, the game will settle into a slow decline, similarly to what happened to GPGnet and the C&C games.

2 years+ later: The community will have settled, and all the people just looking for something cool, shiny and new will have left by now. The playerbase won't change much from here on out. By now, competitive gaming has evolved into full-scale multi-faction galactic/universal wars, with several large servers supporting multiple games at once. Adventures/quests may have also come about, and sandbox servers similar to how Minecraft is, with adventuring and rogue-like gameplay. Mod teams will have created custom game-modes, a full compliment of new factions (2-5), deep-space combat, and several add-ons to make competitive gaming easier and more fun. If the game turns out to be bad, some people will have clung to the game, die-hard fans who like blowing stuff up AND grueling games, but the community will have dropped of quadratically unless a major balance mod comes out which is widely available and widely used. RTSfags will return to FA/Starcraft/DOW/whathaveyou, and casual gamers will most likely return to SC2/DOW. The game will end up like SupCom2, nobody will love it.

Quite a long time from release: Game will become F2P if it is good, and will explode like TF2. Otherwise, the game will loose support, fall into a state of perpetual bugginess and crappy modding. All but the most diehard, bull-headed fans will have abandoned it by now, and those guys who liked Spore.

[Ze_PilOt]

Beta :
- Uber runs some server. There are not enough. We run ours, but we can't play that well due to the bandwidth needed to run them. The game is not really well tested.

Release :
- The servers from Uber are still not enough, and we can't play correctly for the first few days/weeks.
Waiting lists are put in place, and you have to wait several minutes up to some hours in that period.
Due to the lack of a real good beta, the game is imbalance as hell.

Some dedicated rented servers are available (like BF3), but they are not enough or host only silly game modes, that are, for some reasons, really popular (think thermo )

After a while, it become bearable as the online player base decrease, but some games still lags/shutter or die due to the server needs/problems time to time.

After a few month, the balance start looking like something, but it's already too late to make it e-sport compliant.

Some paid DLC are released next to some free ones, to help maintain the servers infrastructure, but the only result is fragmenting the community.

From there, the (online) game start dying until Uber pull the plug or release a PA2 fixing all the previous issues.
Or will become free to play, but terribly unbalanced due to the power of some units you can buy.

PA had a good run for a year or two, it was fun and all, but still not the level of completion we where expecting.

[pip]

I have slightly different pronostic.

Beta: things seem to work well because there are not so many players, so Uber servers are enough. Players are very enthusiastic. However, the game balance is not polished enough due to the fact that most followers of this game (in the forum) have very strange ideas in game design and balance. So some improvements are made, but it's not enough to make the game competitive for release (no RTS is balanced at release anyway).

Release: the server structure of online play ruins every serious attempt at making the game competitive. The online general experience is also undermined by people cheating with their servers, or shutting them down when they are losing the game.

Also, one set of units and no faction is, very shockingly, more boring than several factions with small differences. People lucky enough to get a good online experience with their friends on nice servers enjoy the fun aspect of the game for some month, then get bored.

Unless there are other factions in a fast expansion, along with a better way to ensure competitive games can be played, the game is doomed to get a recognition but that will not last very long.

[Benoker]

I don't like guessing details, but I'm pessimistic:

The game is heavily delayed, costs are running out of proportion. Alpha and beta are rushed, game breaking bugs are still present at release.

Heavy demands on hardware make the game unplayable for 50% of the bakers. The servers do not have enough bandwidth, neither do the players, serious lag results.


Journalists and other people reviewing the game do not understand the basics, and publish idiotic statements like we know them too well from FA. Along the lines of: "you have to build up your base for 5 hours, then you can attack with 10 units!!!", "the game is incredible hard, the AI is unbeatable", or "just build a <enter most expensive, least effective unit here> and you win".

[Veta]

people will be disappointed

[Bliss]

Game will be disappointing in some aspects. Many people will not appreciate the spheric maps and simplified techs. It'll turn out to be a decent rts but not a masterpiece. It will sell good and will have a decent multiplayer community around it but it'll fall into dust after one year or so. Game will not substitute FAF at all.... it will be a decent alternative for a short time though. In case of no future expansions game will be remembered as a nice experiment without big success. I hope neutrino doesn't read this

[pip]

I watched the gameplay video they showed, with the spherical battleground. Honestly, it looked good, and it's not too far from what they advertised in their kickstarter. But the need to rotate the map seemed weird on this so little planet, i can imagine it'll be much harder to handle with a big planet. If you add several planets, each being difficult to see due to not being able to see the whole map even if zoomed out, that'll be more than what my brain can handle for sure. And if they reduce the scope of the planets just because of that, it'll be underwhelming. I believe this is a big problem.