So..will things really change?
 

As we all read, Planetarion will keep running with Spinner and co in charge of the in-game stuff. And we all read that Zeus said things would really move forward now.

We all know that the core of Planetarion is the community, that can't be said enough times. And in my and many others opinion, the former 'creators' lost touch with the community ages ago, here I'm reffering to stuff like

x asked: Why are gal names so short?
<Zeus> I reckon we made galnames short to avoid lots of tags on a single galaxy, and thereby creating overprotected galaxies.
**Spinner nods

or something along those lines it was atleast. So are Spinner and co really capable of developing Planetarion without ruining the community completely?

Same PA crew, which changes? plz take this into account
 

Having read the latest announcement, somethg which i was longing for a while, even though ive left PA for months, not even playing this former round, id like the current PA Crew to consider the following and see if light can be made on their office.

Btw, im posting this because being the same PA crew they´re bound to do the same and follow the same ideals they had before, nothing unnatural.

1) PA is playable only for l33t or wanna-be l33t ppl.

If u ever played you know how true this is, either it means ur online 24/7, this being most true with only random gals.... we´ve all seen this rd and played before, or, you have to waste lotz of time to check up and do everythg decently and non-dependent on others.
If ur not convinced, talk to former HCs and ask what is the common reason why they stepped down, or high ranked players which have left the game.
Also, playign PA at any half-decent level REQUIRES IRC activity. And beign HALF-DECENT member of any alliance, requires at least 2-3 hours on night schedule.

2) PA is a bit boring as in the repetitive sense

launching the same fleet night after night, day after day, week after week, for three months straight i guess i excuse saying anythg else. Real action is in IRC which leads to 1) point.

3) PA isnt user/lowbie/noobie friendly

Everyone tried to have a planet at middle season and everyone experienced wat it is to have incomings at all time. Myself got a planet after a month or so, lasted less than a week due to boredom. Had all nights incoming and even if they got recalled everytime, i found it annoying having to care about it all nights.

Also, after one leaves the initial top-spot racing, there´s few to do or any possibility at all game-wise mechanics. IRC is an option. Just ask alliance HCs at which time most ppl quit and you´ll find that when they lose scores to very low standards and find it impossible or very borign to build over again.

SO, basically what im saying, is this, introduce user-friendly features and lowbie or noob objectives and gameplay, watever it is give them somethg funny and that ppl feel worthy to do while playing. Btw, those objectives at start with scans and roids arent an option.
Make MoW receive defence gal fleets as they once had, Give GC management powers within gal affairs, fleets etc.., introduce or not a sleep-time, 2 or 3 hours would make wonders either to us burned-out ex-players or casual players, and list goes on......

Mix Private gals with random gals

As much as ppl can rantle on this, i guess its the best way to go, this because u bring ppl who are only willing to play for some goal or with mates. But i agree with the ppl who complain on private gals in the aspect that it allows much alliance control and few interaction between noobs and old timers.... the solution could pass on a mix as in r6, with 10 priv ppl and 5 randoms, no more than 15 ppl in a gal plz..... if u wanted to lesser the effects of alliance domination in a gal, make it have 5 privs + 5 privs + 5 randoms, so a good schuffle would result

Why am i giving the trouble of all this ?

Because id still like to play another round, gather my mates again and have them play toghether again, but im not giving away my efforts if game is still the same.

Ive played since late r3, enjoyed every time i played, made lotz of friends, and without doubt the high point at PA was r4 with 180k ppl, the possibilities and fun in IRC were awesome..... why im askign for more user friendly possibilities ? On a personal note, i talk with a few ppl about PA, wat IT has changed in our lifes, why we did quit and what we´d like to see there, and thats quite a review on those matters. If ur still not convinced of it, let me tell u this, ive wasted, literally, 2 years of my graduation due to PA, missed classes, awful results adn so on, sleep deprivation, believe it or not, im now used to sleep in morning and cant get to bed before 4-5 am, and so on, and most of thos ppl who played and quit are like i am..... are we goign to return if it will mean the same ??? NO!

Since its the same PA Crew, major changes are to be unexpected, so i plead them to read and understand wat im asking in the behalf of a DYING game and community. If u want a massive multiplayer game, do a game for the masses and not for the l33t ppl.

Well, seeing as they are the ones that created Planetarion in the first place, I have confidence that they will actually be able to develop Planetarion into a new direction, now that they no longer have to run a business, worry about financial trouble and can actually spend time working freely on the game.

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt :)


Edit: Let's keep things as much as possible in one thread. It's no use to anyone if there's 50 new threads discussing the same subject :)

5 priv + 5 priv + 5 random sounds sexy!

... just like cute ol r7 :D

heheh dmn me ive posted this under ur thread, sry leshy

fk r72dk ;) literally
 

Iff they are going to do anything to the game , it should be to make it free,
no cnut will play iff they make us pay for it again, and the lithuanians will start cc fraud again:/
dont blame them though, they have fk all anyway :/ thus why they resort to cc fraud

I think they should...

1) Make it free, with priv/random gals
15 privs/10rands

2) dont put in the gh3y bh0y 'Sleep time' suggested by r72dk

3) Try and get the game back to the old days when the servers went down and i could launch a fleet at 3am, and come on at 10am and find my fleet was still eta 8 ;) --> j/k btw

no try and get the game back to a respectable amount of players.. :D

4) free speed games/ beta/ :D etc
and we r sorted on our way to an awesome game and bringing the fun back in the game with all the multi's ')
j/k also

-Wednesday13-
:deer: :xmas: :frosty:

it is all true
 

Ditto to all whats said above....
PA lost has a 24/7 player.
/me found how to have fun in real life again.
It is has been more fun then PA's last few rounds.
/me is a very dissappointed PA player.
Thanks to all who have played with me for last 2 years it has been fun knowing u all.
Take care ppl.
Enjoy the end of year festiv
slam some Mezcal for me ;-)

Re: fk r72dk ;) literally
 

1) not enough ppl for having 25 ppl gals

2)explained above, plus the l33t wont feel it, if they do, guess they´re not. 2-3 hours dont affect much the schedule of a launch and if the gal is already warned.... prepare better attacks nxt time :smiley1:

3) ehhe

general: another issue i didnt mention, either its free or u wont have another 2 roudns of PA, doubt jolt would be happy.

all in all, ive wasted another hours on this and i get the feeling its all to nothing....

if its so plz someone post that so i can forget about PA once more...

r7

Some combination of random & private galaxies has to be worked out. All private will kill the game and only power blocks would argue in favour of that anyway. You all know who you are. We've all seen your posts. Don't bother to flame me I coudn't care less if you quit you've helped ruin the game more then p2p did.

Free would be nice. But Jolt did buy a pay game. So we'll have to live with whatever they decide. If the old guard quits and Jolts advertising bring in new people the game will surely change.

Spinner and company did pretty good getting the game this far considering the enormous financial problems they had to deal with.
Theres no reason to think they won't do a lot of really great things with PA without business to worry about. Coding is where they all belong. So lets wait and see. Feck passing judgement on them based on the last few rounds They need a chance to just do what they used to do best code.


I've played PA clones with sleep time built in. It really enchanced the game. As long as you know its there you can attack around it easy enough......But lets face it NO ONE can keep playing 24/7.

Round 9 will just be a filler till the new coding is done...which will go faster with everyone working on it instead of trying to keep the lights on and feed thier families (something the majority of you know NOTHING about). So why bother getting hyped about it. PA will live on even if all the whiners quit and go elsewhere. Its that kind of game and you all have to admit it sooner or later(Can you say addicting?).

After all these rounds it been my experience that adjusting ship stats for a perceived advantage of one ship...or race over another usually winds up ruining the balance. It was the new pods and the loss of those ships they replaced, that really reamed all the races and threw off the balances from the previous round.

Still I think Xan might not have been that big of an advantage...but Terrans definately lost out. Cathaar's need a few good kill ships to make them less palatable. But they were a devil to attack with. Team work with a cathaar mate was very profitable.

Plus don't forget, just because you couldn't exploit cathaar or zik doesn't mean they aren't good races.......It might just mean your not nearly as elite as you think you are.

Well nuff said....this will get flames out my arse I imagine. But r72dk had it right someones got to say it. :)

Merlin

Re: Same PA crew, which changes? plz take this into account
 

Not sure if by "playable" you mean "winable" or "enjoyable?" Winning any decent game should be a matter of skill (primarily) and you should have to be l337 (i.e., skillful) to win. It then becomes a matter of defining and rewarding the relevent skills (note: being online 24/7 is arguably not an especially meaningful "skill").

With respect to enjoyable, the game should hopefully be fun for everyone who plays: winners and losers, l337s and n00bs. This is more difficult, however, as a lot of people apparently can't have fun unless they win (or at least do well)--hence, lots of cheating. :/
Yes. As a strategy game, it sucks--big time. As you noted, virtually all the strategy occurs on IRC. Different sorts of attack and defend missions (like overburn, only more and better) would be one area for improvement.
Part of this relates to (1). It should be possible to have fun playing regardless of score.

This also has become a bigger problem with smaller pa and p2p pa. When pa was free, there were always plenty of new planets. It didn't matter as much when you started because in a week or two there'd be dozens or hundreds of planets even newer than yours. There was always someone you could beat up on. Plus, there were so many targets in virtually all sizes, that if you were even halfway clever, you could make yourself a really unattractive target (at least compared to the others your size).
This seems like the worst of both to me. :reindeer:

The problem that this round has had is certainly been down to too few players. It used to be the way that with random galaxies even the small wouldnt be under constant attack as the number of small galaxies was so large and the number of large in comparision so small that there was more than enough tragets for everyone without the same places being bashed every night, however even this round at least doing well has been based more around SKILL than the private galaxy rounds where it was about WHO you knew plus we got back all the great political elements of the game that are missing in private.

Anyway I have to agree that the 'mixed' galaxies that people are talking about leave us missing the best parts of each and leaving the worst parts of each. Perhaps if galaxies were raised to 25 then the groups of 5 idea might work as you could have 4 competing groups and then 5 randoms which could bring about a fairly good mix of players but if galaxies are only 15 it doesnt really reduces the whole in galaxy politics of the game. You need this 'split' in the gaalxy with multiple people pulling in different directions just to make the gaalxy side of the game more fun, plus the getting over these differences helps build bonds which in turn helps create a stronger community with people who wouldnt mix otherwise doing so.

As for sleep I have to say that to me sounds pretty stupid. After all 2 hours is going to make very little change becuase how often are you really attacked within the first two hours of going away? I cant personally remember the last time I had an attack on me that wasnt between 3am and 10am so to get any benift we would all still have to stay on till at least 3am which then isnt helping those who need to go to bed before that as they have to be up fairly early the next day. And you cant increase the time to over 2 hours otherwise those in none european timezones will have no-one to attack as all us Europeans would go in sleep at around the same time.

Anyway If I was jolt the one major change I would make for r9 would be to make the game free. What PA needs atm is a boost of players to get the community back up to a good level. Without this we will have another poor round resulting in an even lower player base for furture rounds. I know this will cost Jolt some money but in business somethimes you need to spend money to make money and your increase the numbers playing r10 for certain. If they wish to recoup some of the losses running a single round would have the could even stick loads of banner ad and maybe even popups into the game and then charge £10 to get them removed like they do on their forums

free sounds good, get more people in but to keep them i agree the game needs to be a little more friendly towards those who dont have the time, friends, or skills to be elite.










and wakey, its Kudos, not cudos:rolleyes:

[Nah its ment to be Cudos not Kudos - Wakey]

Agree with what you have posted above, just keep in mind, as i stated somewhere, that we simply dont have enough memberbase for 25 planets galaxies. As you said and well, the 'split' is most important for those reasons, and perhaps 2 groups only too few for that to happen, but base on member base limitation, perhaps 4 + 4 + 4 + 3 random ?

The point on that period is again to help to help lowbies or not so addicted ppl. If such period, for instance 3 hours, as 2 i deem its bit unsignificant, was installed, what would happen?
I personally can recall a few times ive seen attacks 1 or 2 tick right after i went away, other can as well. The main benefit of it may relay on the fact that base eta for an attack is 8 add it more 3 for safe period, and u can have a relative good night sleep and when wake up, still have time to arrange defence if needed. Didnt it happen to you, that when you woke you checked your planet with eta 3 inc ? Wouldnt it make a LOT more diference if it was eta 6 ? Most ppl wake up around 8-10 cet, and by that time, as PA developed to it, attacks are scheduled for hitting considering that. Introduce this and we´ll have more acessible attack hours for the general/casual player and more sleep for the night shifts =)

agree as you know for the free :D

thanks for your replies so far,
r72dk

This old discussion gem :)

Stop arguing for 25 players/gal - it makes it impossible to attack a semi organised gal of 25 players yourself which just leads to large powerblocks owning everything. ok?

*cough* round4? *cough* :)

Torz, you on a posting spree?
cnut
lo Coffee, i havent seen you for ages, you prolly dont remember me :(
Way back from Rnd 2
erm, thats all i was gonna say...but better add some discussion

Rnd 1 and 2 rocked...I managed to finish T50, without ever having to attack after 1am!!why cause they where free, and cause there was lotsa semi-actives to attack
In my opinion its 2 late to save planetarion in that respect, people are put of this game cause of the sheer dedication required, its going to take minimum of 2 rounds, allong with allot of advertising to get that influx of players back
thats the only thing i reckon is gonna filter this "l33t" core down..and allow less active people a chance