Update
 

Hello everyone,

Just to let you know what is going on so far.

I will have the new (and community approved) design ready by the end of the week, then it is just up to coders in PATeam to implement it. I am a lot more confident about this one, and I think it will bring in new players for sure. Nick (Blueemu) is finishing off internal Planetarion page designs.

Now, in terms new players, I have arranged (bought) advertising during the signup period on a geek blog, adverts which should be seen by A LOT of people, hopefully around 50k-100k of their readers.
I will also be spending money on a gaming advertising network.

I will also be advertising on ApexWebGaming.com, a games toplist that I bought a month ago.
Most of my time right now has been working on ApexWebGaming, that recieves around 30k visitors a day so advertising from there will certainly bring in new users.
The improved IRC unit (that appoco will hopefully finish by then) should help these new players communicate better with the community and old players.

One bigger change that I would like everyone's opinion on, is that I would like to raise the price of a credit from next round, and from this increased income I want to pay Cin to code the game (so that he is motivated and accountable for doing the work).
Also the game will be completely ad free.

I am also open to having a longer round to compensate for the higher price, if the community would want this. PATeam pointed out however that then we can't fit the rounds into this year, so we would probably have to only have a 1 week break during some of the rounds this year.
I know that prices have been at this level for ages, so I think a slight increase shouldn't be too bad.

I would probably want 1 credit to cost £7.50, 3 credits to cost £20, something like that.

Any feedback is much appreciated.

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I think you'd better convince new players that they want to pay £7.50 for their 1st credit...

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I would suggest an increase to £6 for 1 credit, £15 for 3 credits. £24 for 5 credits. If you had to raise extra income to start paying PA team members. I would still suggest having some adverts on free accounts. but still have same free account restrictions (no bonus that paid account get)
Has there been any marketing research / forecasts been done?

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i was new again this round since not having played since first few rounds, my views on credits is (for me at least) you're not getting enough for your money, I know it costs money but if you're raising the price to £7.50 you should at least give pay-specific units or something like that to sweeten the deal for paying players plus from what i've heard the moment they bought in pay only originally in the game it scared off a hell of a lot of players leading it to its current position. So whatever you're thinking I wouldn't do that again. Just my view as a noob.

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Kind of contradicted yourself, by having the credit benefits limited to a one-off bonus it makes playing the free game plausible and certainly winnable. Pay-only units would create a bridge between free and paid accounts making the game harder for new players who don't wish to pay straight away.

The game is very cheap considering the time length of rounds when compared to monthly subscription games. However I'd rather see credits at 5 pounds with more people playing than at 7.50 with less.

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Lengthy rounds aren't a good return on your money...

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Hey zPeti,

I slightly disagree with the increased credit cost in terms of the fact that I think less people will end up paying for the game then, allthough I can't say for certain, just like you can't say for certain that an increase in pay will actually increase the revenue for the game.

It's a somewhat high risk to take and I appriciate you coming and asking the community before implementing it.

You list the reason for doing it that you want to start paying Cincinnatus, and while I am all for that I don't see why people who are new to the game would understand why the game cost that much just because we have a paid coder.

Another argument against raising the price is that the current bonus for paid members are to small to make it interesting to pay for the game, while going unpaid is not a very big drawback.

Also and last from me when you take into acount the increased downtime periods we've had with the last round, I most certainly don't see why people would be keen on paying extra for the game.

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Length has nothing to do with value for money in Planetarion.

You can never go higher than 10week rounds and even 10week rounds is pushing it alittle too far which causes you to lose players.

I like 7-8 week rounds regardless of a price of a credit :p

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I'd say keep the credits at 5quid, but on signup allow people to make donations (and put donations + alliance nick on the portal somewhere). Make it clear that the 5.00 goes to just maintaining the game/servers/etc, and donations go directly to game improvements.

I'm sure there's lots of people playing with a passion for the game who can afford the odd extra 10-20quid, especially if they receive some kind of reward for it (name up on the portal!).

Just my two pence, I'd try something like that out for a round [should also have a page where you an donate ingame too, not only on signup].

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you will drive peeps away with the extra cost...and what happens to peeps that have already paid for credits ... i hope you wont be messing with that?!

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wow, I will be honest with you, I dont normally read forums, but when some one said this one had begun I had to have a word.
I agree cin and appocomaster should both be paid for what they do, but increasing fees for a game tht has so much down time isnt in my thoughts a good idea. Fix the problems, get the people playing and then you can put the prices up.
BTW I would readily agree to donating to cin if thats whats needed. But it would be voluntarily not enforced.

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ehm u dont need to increase the price.. u just need more members to play this game in order to increase the revenue.. atm when u just increase the prices of the credits ure sure to lose at least some amount of ppl paying currently + it would b even harder on new players..

u need more (new) players, more game changes and when u got a decent playerbase again then u can check the prices and bonuses again..

Im also not very good in these things, tho thats what i was thinking :d

PS: I think u should implement that donation thingy asap as well !

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Prices go up with everything; food, fuel, etc. I see no reason why the cost for this game shouldn't go up--honestly, I'm surprised the price hasn't changed much at all since p2p was introduced.

The point(s) raised about paying more for a game that seems to continually go do are quite reasonable though.

If nothing else, increase the upgrade bonuses, or add a second level of bonuses later in the round or something.

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The IRC client referred to is here

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Crikey, personally £7.50 seems quite a lot.

If i didn't know the game at all i have to say i wouldn't be tempted to gamble £7.50 on a total unknown. However i suppose if more players were attracted and even if they signed up for free they may stick around and pay at some point.

Competition for these types of games is high (......if not numerous) and imo a lot of the competition is less if not free.

More players would surely mean that most of what wants to be done could be done. However i can appreciate that all of what you have already invested needs to be recouped some how.

If i had to pay £7.50 (and still have free accounts in the game) i would expect a big bonus/incentive to be given for paying and tbh a much better game (....experience)

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As you will all know I signed up this round after not playing for a long time. I was semi-active for the first couple of weeks and then became inactive due to work commitments. I then logged on again to find that the round is virtually over. i don't think its worth anyone paying to play this game unless they are incredibly active.

While £5 isn't much, and £7.50 isn't much either - i can get more entertainment out of an iphone game costing £3 than I can out of paying to play PA. Something drastic s needed to make it worth paying to play the game.

While I welcome the decision to pay some PATeam members, this announcement just shows are unviable PA is as a business and how Pete has no idea how run a business. There is absolutely no point advertising the game until the needed changes are implemented (as discussed in my other threads and many other peoples). The graphics changes will be a welcome addition, and I will be pleasantly surprised if they actually make it to the game for next round.

There is also the genuine risk that increasing the price will actually decrease income as we might actually end up with less paid accounts.

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To be honest $7.50 isnt alot, but for those of us , and there are alot, that buy 9 or 12 credits each 6 week round, that is a huge jump, means we buy less, less people can afford to play.

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Your signature says it all, you were PA Team for numerous rounds but really achived jack shit while in charge.

I think that there has been a few very good changes, and a move like this to maybe get a paid coder to do stuff is a good move, however, I belive more in the donation way than in increasing the prices.

But coming from you that PA needs to change after all the rounds you sat and did fk all while in charge is like throwing stone while sitting in a glass house.

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Taking into account UK average inflation since august 2002, credits should cost about £5,76 right now

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<3 mz

Also, just to mention something which I have done in the past:

FACEBOOK.

Facebook apps pretty much ALL come with pay-incentives. Pay $20 for {reward here}, shit like that. SERIOUSLY SERIOUSLY look at Mafia Wars. It's not a better game than PA by a long stretch, but their setup is far superior. And the game officially has 2 million fans.

Two. Million. Fans.

I really don't mean to harp on, zPeti - but you started it.

RE: world - I actually like the idea of having a 2nd tier of ships available for paying customers. The stats would be harder to balance, but that's merely a small obstacle in the grand scheme of things.

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Technically, it's more like telling other people not to throw stones whilst being surrounded in broken glass.

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Not sure about the price change. It might change the game from being cheap and cheerful towards something people might think twice if it provides enough value for money.

From £10 for 3 credits to £20 for 3 credits is a large jump, I'm assuming most people go for this option instead of paying for a single credit. I don't play the majority of rounds these days, however if I do intend to play then I'll grab some credits as it seems like good value for money - but I certainly wouldn't bother if the price doubled. :(

For less than £20 I could buy from a wide variety of games on Steam which provide far more hours of entertainment than a web game which requires for you to get up in the middle of the night to stand a chance of competing.

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I think the price is fine as it is, as catwoman said some of us pay for alliance members to be upgraded. Also a big no to longer rounds, r30 was hell and made more people quit than any other round.

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I agree, thats the same point as I was trying to make - the increase in price means PA is competing with more advnaced forms of entertainment.

While it may not be expenssive I think in the current ecconomic climate only the hard core players will continue to pay. Certainly new players won't pay.

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Without changing the effect upgrading has, I think you will see less paid accounts. The guy who had bought PA just before you (jamie) came on to irc one and night and chatted with the people in #planetarion about credits. What he found out was that there are many people who buy credits for other people each round. If you double the cost of buying more then 1 credit, I fear less people will "get" upgraded. I'm talking about the people who would never buy a credit anyway (for what ever reason) and have depended round after round on their alliance/gal mates/etc to buy it for them. If you raise the rates so drastically, I think people may be less inclined to buy credits for other players.

Right now there is only a slight benefit to actually being upgraded anyway. If you have to raise the rates, but say, also changed it so you got to pick a new upgrade bonus (for example) every 300 ticks, it would keep the demand for being upgraded high, while creating an additional incentive to actually *get* upgraded. You may still run into the problem listed above, but by changing the traditional implementation of the upgrade, people may feel like they are getting more for their money. (Side note is this would affect late sign ups who depend on a large accumulative research bonus for a boost, so perhaps the size of the initial bonus could be based on the tick you sign up as well.)

That is just one idea for changing the upgrade benefit, there are tons of different things you could do, either to make the upgrade more alluring or to just increase revenue (ie mulitple upgrades per round, extra ships, etc). But raising the price without changing anything, plus remembering all the downtime and rollbacks we have every round, just doesn't seem worth it.

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I thought that, but interestingly enough we have more players this round than for the last few rounds (for some reason?)

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i got an email saying that i still had 1 paid credit off a 3-pack i bought back in like rd 13 or something and due to the new ownerships, if i did not spend my remaining credit in rd31 it would be lost...

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The argument is as well if you did bump the price, you'd have to maintain that price for at least three rounds to see if there is actually any substantial change in turnover and subsequent profit. As has been stated above £7.50 is a pretty large amount and is a 50% increase on current prices of a single credit. Now if a new player comes in to "try" the game, the chances are they aren't going to want to pay that much first time around, especially as despite your advertising around the round start people may miss tick start/find it late and so essentially be paying and still have a disadvantage. They'd try the game for free and then if they do take a liking to it then maybe would purchase a credit for the next round, and so that's where you'd start to see sales increase I think. Maybe you want to look more at rates of new players purchasing free accounts and then in the future becoming paid players. Find out why they decided to pay and market it to unpaid accounts that they could have these benefits.

I think a more realistic price increase would be to £6, that gives you a 20% increase and then with an option to donate there could be more. If you made the jump to £7.50 and committed to the three round period you could actually move more players away. The way i've worked in the past is larger sales at a lower profit is better than fewer sales at a huge profit. Do you want a large slice of a very small pie or a little slice of a large one? When compared to the services sector for example you can look at it like a pub where if the pub is heaving and busy it has a great atmosphere, lots of people to talk to & genuinely a nice place to be. If there's 2 old men & a dog in the corner it's not going to encourage more people to come "join the party". By giving people MORE for their money I think you'd attract more players, not charging people more for the same service/product.

Finally it might look like i'm contradicting myself here, but if you look at sales for things such as Mars bars at the moment (in economic downturn) they've still maintained very solid, stable sales figures. It's because everyones got 50p spare for something they want. If you perhaps list the price as £6 - £0.50 a week for 8 weeks I think you may have more success.

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i agree with most here in saying that a price increase probably isnt the way to go

even a 50p rise sends out vibes of negativity. if anything i suggest you LOWER the price - not by the £2.50 sum you'd like to raise it by, but merely by 50p.

this would send out a good sign to the community, and i imagine if credits were 3 for £8 the amount of people buying multiple credits for gal/alliance would increase massively. in all honesty the idea of 3 for £20 sounds horrible, and i think only a handful of hardcore leaders would pay such an amount to upgrade their ally members.

of course this would mean you cant increase to the price you'd like to aim for £7.50 a single credit without a potential backlash, but thinking that far ahead is very optimistic anyway

your main challenge at the minute pete is to get new players and raise the profile of this game, and a lower credit price combined with all this advertising sounds like a good way to do this.

it's like any business which opens or gives itself a facelift, they draw in the customers with reduced prices to make a strong first impression and build a reputation

the rest of the changes sound good though and its great to see you keeping the community updated and working hard to improve planetarion (y)

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I think all this advertising is a waste of money untill you actually make the game more appealing to new players.

Also, the fact that people are already paying 5 quids for a game that can't even go 7 weeks without doing down is pretty amazing, so i don't think increasing the prices are a really good idea.

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Perhaps uptime reliability is regarded as more important to the PA community than length of round. With all due respect to cin and his coding efforts, i'd prefer you to spend the money on ensuring the reliabailty of the servers and internet connection you are using.

It would seem to me that jacking the price to £7.50 is a bit of a brash move for your second round in control. Especially as I and many others even just in F-Crew, feel that the round gone by wasn't worth paying for and are consequently considering a non-pa life (which i cannot blame them) - On contrary to how I phrased that, I myself still wish to continue to enjoy this game and will be here for many more roounds to come I hope. However, I may do this on a free account with adverts that I will never click upon.

If an increase is to be made, then i'd agree with someone elses post that £6 per credit and £15 for 3 would be an acceptable amount.

I'm also a little in doubt about the success of advertising on a geek blog. They are geeks, and hate adverts, and likely to being using some adblocker that they probably coded themselves for that matter. I hope you are right and I am wrong and it pays off, so this money isn't wasted.

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What has been changed about the new player experience to give new players a positive experience in the game? I'm concerned that you're trying to advertise the game to gain more users, yet they'll still have gameplay issues to face which will drive them away.

I've got visions of new players signing up and getting confused because there is nothing ingame to guide them through the setup of their planet. Will they get their constructions right? Will they manage to build an attack fleet which is suitable for their race? Will they ever get scans if they don't have an alliance? Will they figure out a bcalc? Will they even survive in their galaxy? Can they figure out IRC if they've never used it before? Are they going to get exiled?

I suppose they're at least going to have a fancy new design to look at, but I really don't think it's enough.

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I know this isn't really the place for it - but I really do think some sort of private galaxy system should be brought pack into pa. I know I would never have got started in pa back in r3-5 if it wasn't for private gals full of my rl mates. It also meant, there were probably only 5ppl that actually wanted to play the game - the other 15-20 were "forced" into it cos private galaxies sounded a fun way to spend their 5-10mins/day online activity. That said, I appreciate that private gals would suck cos the top galaxies would be unstoppable.

Buddypacks don't have the same effect cos ... the galaxy will fail and it will not be fun (most of my fun in r3-5 in pa came from discussing pa in real life with those said people, not talking on irc about it with them).

I've gone horrendously off-topic, I apologise! Just couldn't resist venting my feelings on this.

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If u need extra income, shorten rounds. Im sure the community will understand, esp during Euro summer.

Perhaps offer a PA world cup/Speed PA round, with a small entrance fee. 1st-5th place = a proportionate percentage of takings ;) (perhaps this could be a test for genuine PA, with its possibility for increased playerbase/income.) I wouldnt mind paying $5 if it meant i could earn $100, for doing something id do for free :D. Id also be more likely to introduce paying customers to PA, if it meant it had a kickback factor :D

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I think a price increase would be justified if it allows you to improve the game further and get decent uptime. The prices have remained constant while the value of the pound has decreased significantly. I would however not recommend a major price increase.
Like many others I also generally buy three credits and often use the extra credits to upgrade others. I will be less inclined to do that if the price doubled. I'm thinking more like BP 6,- for 1 and BP 14,- for 3 credits.

As many others have written, longer rounds are not a solution to give people more value for money. Shorter rounds are much better to increase the income. This round was already boring after ~tick 500.

If the price goes up, the bonusses you get for payment should go up accordingly.

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I think jacking up the prices just before the summer round is a mistake.

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congrats pete i think you just found the final nail for the coffin ,
after all your talk of buying pa because you were a gamer , you have just proved yourself to be another business man who's bottom line is all that counts

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That is a bloody good idea

do special events like speedgame/tornament that require a small enterance fee... this could be an alternative to raising the main game prize :D

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I for one would gladly pay £ 7,50 for a credit

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You're norwegian! Norwegians should be banned from any discussions.... and especially ones involving money.

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You're right to supress banners, they are a nuisance and are ineffective.
But advertising could be used differently, PA has potential:
Find 1 sponsor for each new round, have the round named after him, include his logo somewhere in all the skins, give him the opportunity to PAmail the players 1 time/week or so...
And regarding PA own ads, don't advertise the game, advertise the round. Simplify the registration (2 emails is a turndown for anyone). People should click the ad, click registration and start playing. Put the game 3 clicks away from the ad.

I'm sure a sponsor could give you the extra cash needed to pay the coder.
Just raising the cost of a round is a shortsighted move with a big backfire potential. It can be done once PA has improved on all aspects (graphics sure but more importantly gameplay, user interface, a real tutorial...) not before.

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Welcome to round 32 Getoradion!

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Thanks for the feedback from everyone.

What I can say for sure is that I won't be raising the price to £7.50.

I am really committed to removing all ads, as they are completely unnecessary, however I am definitely looking for alternative methods of raising funds.

Right now it is a decision between not raising prices at all, and having a target donation amount that I would request donations for (this would need to be around £1000-£1500) per round.
The other choice is to raise the price to say £6, and then also implement the donation system but with a lower target amount (probably £500-£1000).

In terms of the advertising, I am very much targeting the same target market that you guys are, I will post the banner as soon as it is ready tomorrow.

The advantage of this is also that I am trying to target people who would be willing to invest a lot of time in the game, since this is not a game that you can play lightly. (i.e. try to target slightly obsessive people :))
One of the other advantages is that so many people have heard of Planetarion, it is something I can exploit. It is really a genre-defining game, which is how I will advertise it.

The game is not currently in a perfect state for new users, however I am considering paying someone for writing a good new player guide (please msg me if you are interested in doing it). Also the easier-to-use com unit should help new players interact with existing players.

Pete

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Thanks Pete.

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This is a good point.

I don't really mind spending £5 for a game.

£7.50, even though it's a tiny rise, is psychologically much more to me as then you're getting near to £10.

Stick with £5. Make rounds shorter. Include more rounds in the year.

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Cin wants £1000-1500 per round?! Slap him around and get it down to £500. I bet kloopy is sad he left pa team now :(

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Paying people to work on PA would be good, but I'm now sure a new player guide is the way forward. People generally don't read manuals and guides, what we need is for any help and assistance to be built into the game. As an example improving the descriptions a the bottom of each page would help - and perhaps making that content more dynamic. For example on the production page it would be helpful if the page could give me advice on what ships I should build to improve my attacking capability.

As a new player I would want all the information I need to do ok to be available easily from within the game.

Another thing to consider, is looking at the alliance rankings, there are probably only 3-400 hard core players left. I'm assuming there are a fair few more paid accounts than this, so trying to recruit hardcore players may not be the best route to grow the game.

As an example, I would class myself as someone that used to be a hardcore player. Now I can no longer reliably use irc or logon at attack target picking times. If the game was designed so that everything (communication, the actual game, alliance attacks, etc.) could all easily be done through a browser then people in a similar position to me would find it much easier to play.

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i haven't said i "want" anything

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No payment required just ask :)