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MrLobster 24 Mar 2009 15:38

Remove redundant historical features and simplify game
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Light (Post 3168220)
This is one of the main problems with PA today. Admins simply dont understand what they are doing and code new 'features' every round regardless of weither they add to the game or not, they simply code them so that they have something to announce.

Lets look at the resource system:
1. Metal was designed with the intention of being the resource to initiate roids and build NORMAL ships.
2. Crystal was designed to be the resource to build scans and EMP ships.
3. Eonioum was the resource for fuel.

Admins decided that fuel costs were wrong for the game so deleted them. What did they do with Eonoum? nothing. So admins made Eonioum redudent but then didnt care, they only had the foresight to get rid of the fuel costs.

They then got rid of the EMP/Normal tech tree, what did they decide to do the resource system? NOTHING.

They then got rid of the scanning and initating for roids system? Instead they replaced it with a simple system of it costs Metal to init Metal roids, Crystal for Crystal roids etc..

This made the 3 resource system COMPLETLY redudent, there is 0 reason for it.

this expands to every single area of PA, its overly complicated and overly retarded. There is no vision in PA, so over the course of 30 rounds, things have progressivly got worse as admins code additions to the game which arnt needed or arnt thought through.

Next, lets look at Research.. Seems reletively simple, in the beginning each research would take X amounts of ticks regardless of external factors i.e. Frigate ships would take 12 ticks to everyone. Now, lets look at the current state of research?
Things no longer take X amounts of ticks, that was deemed way too simple ages ago. Instead now each race is assigned a Base Research Points, then we have Goverment bonuses added to that base research points and then on top of that we have the population bonuses added onto it, if that wasnt enough.. we then have research factory (construction) bonuses added onto it and all of this adds up to equal the amount of ticks it takes to research something. Confused? you should be but lets look at what the Manual has to say on this matter, maybe its less confusing.. so lets go and look at the 'research page':

Thats all it says on the matter, they dont bother with the equation because its stupidly complicated but for the sake of argument lets figure out the equation to find the research points for a Terran planet with 50% population in research and 1 Research facility (out of 1 construction) and dictatorship goverment:
100+((100/100)*50)+((100/100)*20)-((100/100)*10)
(i think that formula's right?)
Wow, what a way to attract new players.. make the game so stupidly complicated it will take them ages to understand the mechanincs.. that will attract them to stay?

Lets look at the old system, of every research has a static amount of time to research.. What was wrong with it? i'll ask that again, WHAT WAS WRONG WITH IT? nothing, admins changed it for the sake of it.

The same goes for construction.

Now lets look at the population page?
Population: 122,364,100 Growth: 3%.. Wow my population is 122,364,100 what does that mean? i better look at the manual..

So it means nothing? so.... WHAT IS IT DOING IN THE GAME? If the feature isnt finished yet, then why is it public?

zPeti, you wonder why PA has lost a huge portion of its player base and how to make PA a better game? All you need to do is look at the game then quiz Appocomaster on what you see... Here is some suggestions:
1. What is the point of Eonium? What is special about it?
2. So there's no point to it? so whys it in the game?
3. What is the point of Crystal? what is special about it?
4. You deleted the reasons for it? but kept it in the game?
5. Why is MOTD (Message of the Day) so overly cramped and containing months old information?
6. Why did you implement new quests in the game? with no reward of intentive? what do these achieve except for confusing new players?
7. Why is the in-game mail you recieve when you sign up to PA and log-in a wall of text with no information,tips or guidence for new players.. instead all it does is inform players that they can upgrade there account.
8. Why in a war game? is it much more profitable not to go to war but to fence? Surely, in a war game.. war should be the most profitable and the combat code backs that up?
9. Why is everything in the game so complicated and not explained? To work out the research points you'll recieve you need to visit 3 pages of the manaul and think of the formula yourself.. When in the original Planetarion, the most complicated formula was Amps vs Asteroid Scans.
10. Why are there 5 different races? what did this add to the original game? or was they just added for an extra feature? Why not just 1 race with multiple tech tree paths?
11. What is the point in constructions? Everyone (in the know) just spams Finance Centers for maxium benefit, even adding a cap on them does nothing, as everyone will still spam them until they reach the cap.
12. Why are research labartorys in the game? what do they add except make the research formula more complicated and force everyone to make there 1st/6th/11th/etc consutrction a research center.
13. Waves? how does a new player attack people without proper access to scans? or how does a small alliance cope without dedicated scanners? simple answer is they dont do well at all.. Is there anything being done about this? No? as admins arnt concerned about new players or small alliances as they arnt the ones in #alliances.
14. WTF IS #alliances, why do some people get priority on how PA is run? Is it a simple your Ego must be this big to have an opinion?
15. Why is there 0 updates on the portal, The game might as well be dead as far as the portal is concerned, its updated once every 2months (or everytime theres a rollback) with crap. Wow, there was a creators hour? Do i want to sive through all the crap? no, but have you taken 5minutes to make a summary of the important things said? no, you've simply copied and pastied a log. pravo.
16. Covert ops, dont get me started.
17. Production? why can people hide there prod? WTF is the point in adding factorys to the game?
18. Why is incluster defence -1 ETA? is there any cluster alliances anymore?
19. Why doesnt prelaunch have any major penaltys against it other than being detected in a JGB?

I could go on with this crap but at the end of the day thats what you should be doing zPeti. Question every single addition to Planetarion which has been made since Round 1 and if the answer isnt to your satisfaction, change it. The thing PA is missing is vision, as every single round PA Team changes its mind on what it wants to do and it results in a huge mess.


MrLobster 24 Mar 2009 15:38

Re: Lights Observations
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Tactitus (Post 3168227)
Light pretty well said most of what I was going to say. There are a lot of features (or remnants of features) that don't make sense anymore because other features have been ripped out. Removing the remnants is one option; giving the remnants some new purpose would be another. The real problem though is one of vision and design. How do you want the game to work and what features are necessary to make that happen?

There's also a trade-off between texture and complexity. Game features (different resource types, different ship types, different races, different tech branches, etc) can add interest to the game; but they also add complexity. Also, it always easier/more fun to add new features rather than delete old ones, so feature creep and second-system effects are a real problem.


MrLobster 24 Mar 2009 15:39

Re: Lights Observations
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by MrLobster (Post 3168261)
Comments on Lights

1) I prefer the old style of style of PA production, the current way isnt needed. Do we really need to be able to build ships faster? You can still keep the constructions for ship building, just dont have them affect the actual building time.

2) Research construction is a bit silly and no real point in having it, thats what population is for.

3) The same could be said for Security centers.

4) With prelaunch, I think you need to be a little leanient on the newbs, it opens up the game to semi actives without changing the essence of the game.

Population Trimming

The reasoning for some of the below, is to be able to disrupt the target planets abilities, but you cannot affect pop settings externally.

1) Remove the population setting for ship wrights, I doubt many people use this.

2) Remove population setting for Security, a bit redundant if you have security guards and agents. The pop setting ends up being used at the end of the round when enough research is done. which isnt nice for cov-ops.

3) Remove population setting for research, but keep research labs.


MrLobster 24 Mar 2009 15:40

Re: Lights Observations
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by GReaper (Post 3168262)
I think this deserves a seperate thread, whilst it's a super long rant - it's a decent and fairly accurate one.

Far too many changes in the past 15 or so rounds have been tweaking the same things over and over again, very little new worthwhile content has been added. A few changes are appreciated at times, but it's just going round in circles making existing content more complicated without any benefit from it being changed.


IsNoGoOd 24 Mar 2009 18:31

Re: Lights Observations
 
i must say you have aloth of good points here Mrlobster, i allso wonder why no one are fighting anymore, if you se a battle report, it is cause some one overslept :P now we dont land if we lose 2 ships, in the old days we could and often did land on deacent ammounts of defence. but with 100 roids its does take to long time to rebuild...

IsNoGoOd 24 Mar 2009 18:33

Re: Lights Observations
 
i do wonder what happend to my old forum account aswell :P

Mistwraith 24 Mar 2009 18:45

Re: Lights Observations
 
Cos i'm ancient i remember this

Quote:

Lets look at the resource system:
1. Metal was designed with the intention of being the resource to initiate roids and build NORMAL ships.
2. Crystal was designed to be the resource to build scans and EMP ships.
3. Eonioum was the resource for fuel.

Admins decided that fuel costs were wrong for the game so deleted them. What did they do with Eonoum? nothing. So admins made Eonioum redudent but then didnt care, they only had the foresight to get rid of the fuel costs.

Metal and Crystal were for building ships, Eonium was fuel, you had to have enough eonium to launch the selected fleet , many fleets got stuck at home during attacks on the planet because they simply didnt have the fuel to lift off !

This was changed to the current system where ships are made by metal and crystal and eonium is built in through new fuel cell technology and engine technology, meaning you use the eonium to create the fuel just once, like warp core technology in star trek.

Light 24 Mar 2009 18:49

Re: Lights Observations
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Mistwraith (Post 3168295)
Cos i'm ancient i remember this




Metal and Crystal were for building ships, Eonium was fuel, you had to have enough eonium to launch the selected fleet , mant fleets got stuck at home during attacks on the planet because they simply didnt have the fuel to lift off !

This was changed to the current system where ships are made by metal and crystal and eonium is built in through new fuel cell technology and engine technology, meaning you use the eonium to create the fuel just once, like warp core technology in star trek.

Yes i know it got changed and the reason why; I also agree that fuel costs were ultimatly bad for the game. The thing is though, that with that.. they didnt give eonium a meaning. Then they got rid of scanning for roids, which deleted a reason for Crystal.. While they also changed the init'ing process from Metal to all 3 resources, deleting the reason for Metal.

So we ended up with 3 resource types, with nothing seperating them.

That was the point of my post, the changes made to the game have either made things redudent (but kept them in the game) or made things overly complicated. Planetarion is no longer a 'clean and simple game'.. Its a mess. Its also not a good sign that zPeti's 2 most important questions he wants answers for, are Round Length and Round Start Date.

Veedeejem! 24 Mar 2009 19:09

Re: Lights Observations
 
Agree completly with what light said!

_Kila_ 24 Mar 2009 21:40

Re: Lights Observations
 
I disagree with a few of Light's points.
#1 Races
Why should we have 1 race and a tech tree you specialise in? why shouldn't we keep it this way? It's less confusing for newbies who will get a bit of everything and then just suck...

#2 Constructions
They're fine. Yes FCs are very strong, but with the cap, other ways of playing are more viable (dist-whoring), even for those who decide to max FCs.

#3 Covert ops
Cov ops are good as they are. Maybe 10 rounds ago they were broken but I like the current system.

#4 Production
I agree with the bit about hiding prod, but the way the current system works is good; maybe PA team should just turn on the feature that disables prod hiding. The old system had huge flaws which this one doesn't (top players having half their score in res and being able to build whatever ship they need when they get incs in 4-5 ticks.) This also encourages people to build more than just 1 of each factory and then spam FCs/amps/dists.

#5 Prelaunch
Pete is trying to get more players in, and you're going to try to make it so that the less hardcore are penalised? If you know how to play, seeing prelaunches on your jgp is a pretty great advantage. Prelaunch is fine as it is.

Light 24 Mar 2009 22:18

Re: Lights Observations
 
The main point of the rant was that everything thats been implemented in the previous rounds needs streamlining and looked at, to make it all less complicated.. It wasnt intended as a 'these are my suggestions', more of.. Ask these questions or review if these additions are actually working as intended, as over the previous 30 rounds so many things have been added into the game with no direction or real after-care; which has resulted in everything getting more and more complicated.

However, i'll go over your points:
Quote:

Originally Posted by _Kila_ (Post 3168312)
#1 Races
Why should we have 1 race and a tech tree you specialise in? why shouldn't we keep it this way? It's less confusing for newbies who will get a bit of everything and then just suck...

The main reason would to having only 1 race and a tech tree you specialise in, would be to give the user 'choice' and give them the ability to choose (specialise at the correct time, rather at start up where they dont even know how to play yet). You could still have NORMAL, EMP, STEAL, CLOAKED ships.. Just you'd be able to specialise your planet how you wanted it.

I'm always against forcing users to make a major choice before they've even logged in.

Quote:

Originally Posted by _Kila_ (Post 3168312)
#2 Constructions
They're fine. Yes FCs are very strong, but with the cap, other ways of playing are more viable (dist-whoring), even for those who decide to max FCs.

My main point against constructions (and research) was not the constructions themselves but the formula to work out the ETA time to build constructions.. Its overly complicated.

On the topic of FC's, i personally think they are over-powered and shouldnt even be in the game. The resource and roid system needs a change where each resource in the game has a reason to be there.. Making mines more important as you shouldnt just want a 1% increase in every resource but instead more metal/crystal or eonium depending on what you want to do/build.

Quote:

Originally Posted by _Kila_ (Post 3168312)
#3 Covert ops
Cov ops are good as they are. Maybe 10 rounds ago they were broken but I like the current system.

I strongly dislike Covert ops, however, as ive never actually used it.. Its not my place to change it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by _Kila_ (Post 3168312)
#4 Production
I agree with the bit about hiding prod, but the way the current system works is good; maybe PA team should just turn on the feature that disables prod hiding. The old system had huge flaws which this one doesn't (top players having half their score in res and being able to build whatever ship they need when they get incs in 4-5 ticks.) This also encourages people to build more than just 1 of each factory and then spam FCs/amps/dists.

My question regarding Production was meant simply as a suggestion to what type of questions zPeti should be asking himself or Appocomaster when judging what needs changing. It wasnt intended to state that Factorys are a useless addition, more than they should be questioned regarding there effectiveness and what they bring to the game.

Quote:

Originally Posted by _Kila_ (Post 3168312)
#5 Prelaunch
Pete is trying to get more players in, and you're going to try to make it so that the less hardcore are penalised? If you know how to play, seeing prelaunches on your jgp is a pretty great advantage. Prelaunch is fine as it is.

Again, i wasnt trying to say that it should be penalised more, just that it should be reviewed.


The main point of those 15/16 questions wasnt to offer suggestions but was more aimed at what zPeti should be asking. Nearly every feature in PA has been altered since its creation with many having multiple new additions made to them making it more and more complicated (needlessly complicated). While, hardly anything has been taken out of the game.. even if it got made obsolete. I'll quote the end of that rant, as that kinda sums up what i was getting at

Quote:

I could go on with this crap but at the end of the day thats what you should be doing zPeti. Question every single addition to Planetarion which has been made since Round 1 and if the answer isnt to your satisfaction, change it. The thing PA is missing is vision, as every single round PA Team changes its mind on what it wants to do and it results in a huge mess.

lofty 24 Mar 2009 23:13

Re: Lights Observations
 
I never really did understand why pax was introduced, pre rnd 10 in my opinion was far better than it is now. Too many features and too complicated for new people.

DunkelGraf 25 Mar 2009 02:25

Re: Lights Observations
 
Why is everybody stating that certain features are not good for NEW PLAYERS?
Is it really that complicated?
Light got some valid points but i think having different races is fun to have.

A statement of the creators of how they want to have pa developed within the next rounds would be nice.

Oh, when changing the lenght of a round you really need to change certain parts of the game aswell.
Government for example. I always picked the government that gives me faster research as i need hulls, tt, hct AND scans to be able to play properly but now its more or less useless to have that. Round is long enough to research all of that with another government and having their benefits.

Also certain racial benefits are more worthwhile in a longer round compared to a shorter one.

Thinking before doing!

Prost!

GReaper 25 Mar 2009 02:54

Re: Lights Observations
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by DunkelGraf (Post 3168342)
Why is everybody stating that certain features are not good for NEW PLAYERS?
Is it really that complicated?

Yes, it's awful. Take a look at covert operations for example:

Quote:

(50+5*min(security_guards/(total_asteroids+1),10))*(1+(%security_centres*2 + %government alert bonus + %population security workers)/100)
Too much stuff in this game involves ****ing formulas and there are no ingame tools to make these things simple enough to understand. Why can't I just perform a scan on a player and have some buttons to click to calculate the odds of a successful covert operation with a particular number of agents? It's not really a complex formula, but anyone starting the game will instantly wonder why they're playing the game if they have to calculate so many different things.

I had to read the manual just to find this information out, because the game itself doesn't even bother.

Light 25 Mar 2009 02:56

Re: Lights Observations
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by DunkelGraf (Post 3168342)
Why is everybody stating that certain features are not good for NEW PLAYERS?
Is it really that complicated?
Light got some valid points but i think having different races is fun to have.

Certain features arnt good for new players and one new feature doesnt usually make things that complicated.. Its what happends afew rounds after that feature is implemented, when the PA Team think of a new addition to that feature making the formula more complicated.. Then afew rounds after that, another addition to it which makes it even more complicated. Until you're left with good features but with the way they've been added its created a huge mess.

The example i used was the formula for working out your Research (or construction points per tick).
Each race has a different base research points? thats fine.
Each goverment has different research bonuses? thats fine.
Population settings affects the research points? thats fine.
You can build research facilitys to gain a research bonus? thats fine.
They are all fine features when you talk about them by themselves but when you add all that together, you end up with a stupidly complicated formula (which btw, is not even in the manual and to work it out you need to visit 3 pages picking out the information from the wall of texts).

100+((100/100)*50)+((100/100)*20)-((100/100)*10)
^^ Is the formula for Research Points Per Tick for a Terran Planet with 50% population in research, 20% of constructions in Research Facilitys and Dictatorship goverment.

or if you want a universal formula its this monstrosity:
X+((X/100)*Y)+((X/100)*Z)+((X/100)*A)
X = Base Research points
Y = Population bonus
Z = Research Facility bonus
A = Goverment Bonus
No wonder the formula isnt in the manual
*Edit* Actually, that formula's wrong as its presuming every Goverment bonus is a positive bonus.
*Edit* No wait, It'd work out the same anyway, as you're multiplying by the minus number, making it subtract anyway when you come to add in that minus number. Too tired :p

Each round admins make new additions which sound fine but when looking at the bigger picture they end up making things more complicated. Admins very rarely (if ever) try to simplify what they've added.

Quote:

A statement of the creators of how they want to have pa developed within the next rounds would be nice.
Its not really a case of what they aim to develop within the next 1-3 rounds, PA needs to have a vision of what it wants to be with every feature thats in the game backing up that vision. It also needs to find a way to simplify its formulas back to a manageable state.

Quote:

(50+5*min(security_guards/(total_asteroids+1),10))*(1+(%security_centres*2 + %government alert bonus + %population security workers)/100)
lol GReaper, i never realised the formula for Cov-ops was that complicated... I'm not even going to bother trying to dissect that.

Cincinnatus 25 Mar 2009 04:04

Re: Lights Observations
 
when you complain about a formula you could at least bother using the "format" shown in the manual instead of intentionally rewriting it to make it look seriously complicated.

Code:

RP Output = base_output *(1+(%research_labs + population bonus + government bonus)/100)
and how is that so much worse than the old research time formula:
Code:

research_time = default_res_time * (100 - (engineering_bonus + res_lab_bonus + (100 - race_bonus)) /100)

Mzyxptlk 25 Mar 2009 10:38

Re: Remove redundant historical features and simplify game
 
I came up with this before reading Cin's post (damn you!), but it comes down to the same thing with one fewer bracket:

points = base * (100+pop% + gov% + reslab%) / 100

(On a sidenote, I'm a fan of the research/construction formulae; they're simple, intuitive and straight to the point.)

Light, I certainly agree that there are parts of the game that can be simplified, but hammering formulas is a bit pointless. The fact of the matter is that PA is one big mathematical formula just like any other game. Having researched some of the underlying game mechanics in real games, they're all this complicated under the hood.

The only thing that can be done about this is showing the result of some of the actions you can take ingame. For example, on the production page, you can see how long an order will take before you place it, removing the need for players to see the formula at all, replacing it with a generic ("the more population and factories you put on production, the faster it will finish". Some of the more advanced areas of the game are not so suitable for this (for example, cov ops), because they require more information that is available to every player (ie, a planet and development scan).

Appocomaster 25 Mar 2009 15:15

Re: Remove redundant historical features and simplify game
 
If I attempt to reply to every comment here, the reply will be so long that I doubt many would reply.
Firstly, whilst I don't believe that all these criticisms are valid, some fair few are. What the game needs (and hasn't had since Round 10 or so) is one or more full time developers (though coders are also nice :)). Whilst this in no way weakens the criticisms placed against Planetarion, it might be worth considering.
We haven't presented one vision and tried to push everything to conform to that. That's a fault I can't defend against. I'm not a visionary, and few people have submitted visions (JBG springs to mind), let alone ones that are feasably codable with our current coding resources (Cin, as well as myself infrequently). I'd gladly step aside, but in 4 years I've found no one willing to take the position of head of development, and few to even be around as a deputy!

@Some of the criticisms (mainly Light!)
Quote:

Originally Posted by Light (Post 3168220)
Lets look at the resource system:
1. Metal was designed with the intention of being the resource to initiate roids and build NORMAL ships.
2. Crystal was designed to be the resource to build scans and EMP ships.
3. Eonioum was the resource for fuel.

Admins decided that fuel costs were wrong for the game so deleted them. What did they do with Eonoum? nothing. So admins made Eonioum redudent but then didnt care, they only had the foresight to get rid of the fuel costs.

They then got rid of the EMP/Normal tech tree, what did they decide to do the resource system? NOTHING.

They then got rid of the scanning and initating for roids system? Instead they replaced it with a simple system of it costs Metal to init Metal roids, Crystal for Crystal roids etc..

This made the 3 resource system COMPLETLY redudent, there is 0 reason for it.

Metal/Crystal/Eonium: Fuel cost was removed for aforementioned reasons. Scanning for asteroids was removed to make it more simple for new players, and to remove some randomness. The same is the reason why initiation costs were changed. Metal/Crystal/Eonium were kept to keep some variety between the races. We could have removed them, but that seemed to be oversimplifying (and would really have demanded one race, which, to be honest, we don't have the coding time for at the moment).
Anyway, all the other changes were for making things simple, which you seem to support in the formulae.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Light
<lots of random stuff about research, construction,production>

The production/research/construction changes were to make things more interesting. Research queuing has been found useful by some, but I think a large number of people would argue that the possible change in production times has had a fairly significant impact on the game. The formulae are complicated, but not required unless you want to make extensive plans - all times have a current completion tick on them. As Mz has suggested, we can for example clutter up the population page with predictions on how long current research / construction / etc will change.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Light
this expands to every single area of PA, its overly complicated and overly retarded. There is no vision in PA, so over the course of 30 rounds, things have progressivly got worse as admins code additions to the game which arnt needed or arnt thought through.

I'd argue that the alliance tax, alliance scan sharing, alliance defence upgrade, alliance attack upgrade, alliance fund, alliance intel, alliance merging, new quest system and bcalc were all useful additions to the game, and those which helped those less experienced most of all. There were issues with a few of the introductions (noticeably the new quest system), but are they all overly complicated or 'retarded' ?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Light
6. Why did you implement new quests in the game? with no reward of intentive? what do these achieve except for confusing new players?

Because they were finished late and adding them in late would have caused even more problems
Quote:

7. Why is the in-game mail you recieve when you sign up to PA and log-in a wall of text with no information,tips or guidence for new players.. instead all it does is inform players that they can upgrade there account.
The e-mail sent when you sign up contains lots of useful information, before you even log in to the game. It's not my fault you don't read it

Quote:

8. Why in a war game? is it much more profitable not to go to war but to fence? Surely, in a war game.. war should be the most profitable and the combat code backs that up?
Experience? When we had too much, it caused hugely unbalanced gameplay, but it's still there and still benefits combat situations - it's the main source of experience.

Quote:

9. Why is everything in the game so complicated and not explained? To work out the research points you'll recieve you need to visit 3 pages of the manaul and think of the formula yourself.. When in the original Planetarion, the most complicated formula was Amps vs Asteroid Scans.
Wrong, it was the combat formula. Also, answered above.

Quote:

10. Why are there 5 different races? what did this add to the original game? or was they just added for an extra feature? Why not just 1 race with multiple tech tree paths?
Ask Spinner / Fudge for why they brought in races.

Quote:

11. What is the point in constructions? Everyone (in the know) just spams Finance Centers for maxium benefit, even adding a cap on them does nothing, as everyone will still spam them until they reach the cap.
wasn't always the case, the cap helps somewhat. No one else has suggested a better setup :)
Quote:

12. Why are research labartorys in the game? what do they add except make the research formula more complicated and force everyone to make there 1st/6th/11th/etc consutrction a research center.
not everyone does this, especially not near the end of the game. It's opportunity cost. The average amount of res labs in the top 500 is 5, with the most common being 2/4/3/5 (in that order), and 350 having 5 or less.
Quote:

13. Waves? how does a new player attack people without proper access to scans? or how does a small alliance cope without dedicated scanners? simple answer is they dont do well at all.. Is there anything being done about this?
Like the landing scan, the quest of which gives you a wave amplifier?
Quote:

No? as admins arnt concerned about new players or small alliances as they arnt the ones in #alliances.
Oh, sorry. you second guessed me and got it wrong. Stop being so presumptive (and wrongly presumptive).
Quote:

14. WTF IS #alliances, why do some people get priority on how PA is run? Is it a simple your Ego must be this big to have an opinion?
No. Unless Asc has sent people in to wind everyone up, most people in #alliances have far smaller egos than top players. In the last rounds, this forum has been used far more than that. I said this already, but you may have missed that. Those long CH logs, I guess :)
Quote:

15. Why is there 0 updates on the portal, The game might as well be dead as far as the portal is concerned, its updated once every 2months (or everytime theres a rollback) with crap. Wow, there was a creators hour? Do i want to sive through all the crap? no, but have you taken 5minutes to make a summary of the important things said? no, you've simply copied and pastied a log. bravo.
We remove all the nick changes, kicks, bans, etc from the log first *actually*
We update it more regularly than every 2 months, even apart from the downtime announcements. I take your point, though I'm not quite sure what we're meant to be filling it with. Most players seem to find it hard enough to read what we announce on the portal anyway, without us creating more announcements for them to read through.

Quote:

17. Production? why can people hide there prod? WTF is the point in adding factorys to the game?
It's not "hidden" ever since we added it into the planet scan; variable production times (faster productions with an opportunity cost of other constructions)
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18. Why is incluster defence -1 ETA? is there any cluster alliances anymore?
No, because alliances and galaxies seem to demand increasing amounts of loyalty. Perhaps if we had another fleet ... :)

Quote:

19. Why doesnt prelaunch have any major penaltys against it other than being detected in a JGB?
JBG is pretty powerful, but not even he can detect all prelaunches.
As has been said, detection is a major penalty.

Sorry, I realise that some of these have already been answered.

I fail to see a summary of what Light is trying to get from her rant though - all I can get out of it is "remove things that I find too complicated when I read the formula page of the manual" and "remove things that I don't think have a point".
We could remove the population counter, as I'm not sure that's going anywhere these days. It doesn't seem to be going in a direction you want anyway, and your ego is big enough we have to pay attention to you :/

GReaper 25 Mar 2009 15:45

Re: Remove redundant historical features and simplify game
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Appocomaster (Post 3168402)
I'd gladly step aside, but in 4 years I've found no one willing to take the position of head of development, and few to even be around as a deputy!

Hardly surprising when people don't get a response when they've applied to help.

Light 25 Mar 2009 16:29

Re: Remove redundant historical features and simplify game
 
Incoming Wall of text:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Appocomaster (Post 3168402)
If I attempt to reply to every comment here, the reply will be so long that I doubt many would reply.
Firstly, whilst I don't believe that all these criticisms are valid, some fair few are. What the game needs (and hasn't had since Round 10 or so) is one or more full time developers (though coders are also nice :)). Whilst this in no way weakens the criticisms placed against Planetarion, it might be worth considering.
We haven't presented one vision and tried to push everything to conform to that. That's a fault I can't defend against. I'm not a visionary, and few people have submitted visions (JBG springs to mind), let alone ones that are feasably codable with our current coding resources (Cin, as well as myself infrequently). I'd gladly step aside, but in 4 years I've found no one willing to take the position of head of development, and few to even be around as a deputy!

Dont mis-interperet my post, it wasnt intended as direct criticism to you or the other members of the PA Team. It was more aimed at how you make the choice to what to implement/change or ignore. I may be wrong but it seems that when someone makes good suggestion on what could improve or add to the game (and its feasable to code) then you'll go ahead and code it. The problem with this, is that over-time this has resulted in a bloated game with some things overly complicated and in the game for the sake of it. While the point i was trying to make was that you (or hopefully zPeti) should take responsibility for the game and outline a vision of what you want Planetarion to be and the features coded around that vision.

Quote:

Metal/Crystal/Eonium: Fuel cost was removed for aforementioned reasons. Scanning for asteroids was removed to make it more simple for new players, and to remove some randomness. The same is the reason why initiation costs were changed. Metal/Crystal/Eonium were kept to keep some variety between the races. We could have removed them, but that seemed to be oversimplifying (and would really have demanded one race, which, to be honest, we don't have the coding time for at the moment).
Anyway, all the other changes were for making things simple, which you seem to support in the formulae.
I agree with the changes dont get me wrong what i was trying to imply was that you took out some features but didnt replace them with a valid alternative. I dont want Metal/Crystal/Eonium to be removed from, i just want them to mean something again.

On the topic of initiating roids though, i will say that i'd love to have it returned back to METAL being the only resource for initiating roids. This is the kind of feature i like, as it adds a new level of tactics and strategy into the game without making it complicated. To the new player, they understand instantly without having to refer to a manual that they need Metal to initiate more roids and to the more experienced player, he/she can plan or make strategys on what they will think is the best way to initiate there roids. It also changes the element for races (which you pointed out) and makes each race and ship costs mean something, as now you'd initiate more crystal roids if you're resources cost more etc.

http://pirate.planetarion.com/showpo...2&postcount=22
^^ is abit more in depth on the changes i'd suggest for the resources.

Quote:

The production/research/construction changes were to make things more interesting. Research queuing has been found useful by some, but I think a large number of people would argue that the possible change in production times has had a fairly significant impact on the game. The formulae are complicated, but not required unless you want to make extensive plans - all times have a current completion tick on them. As Mz has suggested, we can for example clutter up the population page with predictions on how long current research / construction / etc will change.
I like research queing. The point with research i was trying to make across was that things have been added to the game for the sake of it.. Formula's should be as clean and as simple as possible while still achieving there goal (adding new elements to the game).

If you want to get down to what i'd directly suggest, i'd say get rid of research centers or change the way they're implemented. The reason for this, is that at the moment you're 1st/6th/11th/16th construction is always one and its not exactly clear that this is what you should be doing from just looking at the construction page. You should steer clear from things that you have no alternative, that when someone asks 'what should i be doing', every single responce will say the same thing i.e. its required.

If you want to add variety in constructions, then you should try and make things as equal as possible.. so that people actually have a choice, rather than a set path. What you should be aiming for, is that when someone asks on the forums 'what constructions should i build?', every single reply comes back with a different responce (or at least, there is no 'right' answer).

Quote:

I'd argue that the alliance tax, alliance scan sharing, alliance defence upgrade, alliance attack upgrade, alliance fund, alliance intel, alliance merging, new quest system and bcalc were all useful additions to the game, and those which helped those less experienced most of all. There were issues with a few of the introductions (noticeably the new quest system), but are they all overly complicated or 'retarded' ?
Sorry, i shouldnt of said all. There are obviously some things added to the game which are good for the new player or less active player. Especially the quest system and battlecalc.

Quote:

Because they were finished late and adding them in late would have caused even more problems
Then why add them at all? :p

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The e-mail sent when you sign up contains lots of useful information, before you even log in to the game. It's not my fault you don't read it
no-one reads it :p

Quote:

Experience? When we had too much, it caused hugely unbalanced gameplay, but it's still there and still benefits combat situations - it's the main source of experience.
I know the reasons but it still doesnt change the fact that in this WAR game, the way to win is by fencing and nap'ing and not going to war. The combat code needs to be changed to make hitting big planets (actives) more profitable than hitting small planets (new players).

Quote:

not everyone does this, especially not near the end of the game. It's opportunity cost. The average amount of res labs in the top 500 is 5, with the most common being 2/4/3/5 (in that order), and 350 having 5 or less.
Yes, it changes when you get towards the end of the game but at the start it is the case. Then once you get


**EDIT** Sorry, the questions in my rant arnt aimed as direct suggestions or things which 100% should be changed. They was just off the top of my head on things zPeti should be asking himself when he decides on he aims for Planetation to be. So there is no point going through each question and defending the points in each, as they are obsolete until zPeti decides on his vision for PA.

Quote:

I fail to see a summary of what Light is trying to get from her rant though - all I can get out of it is "remove things that I find too complicated when I read the formula page of the manual" and "remove things that I don't think have a point".
We could remove the population counter, as I'm not sure that's going anywhere these days. It doesn't seem to be going in a direction you want anyway, and your ego is big enough we have to pay attention to you :/
The main point of my rant was to stop adding new features for the sake of it. First decide on your vision for Planetarion and your goal, then go through each of its current features and make sure that they fit in with this goal (and that they are actually adding to the game the way you intended).

Alot of the 'questions' i asked in that post, i personally dont feel need tweaking/deleted or simplifying.. Just that they are the sort of things zPeti should be asking himself.

Appocomaster 25 Mar 2009 16:32

Re: Remove redundant historical features and simplify game
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by GReaper (Post 3168406)
Hardly surprising when people don't get a response when they've applied to help.

I did answer your question about the NDA
Which one did you apply for? I know that Fiery (and for Support, Monroe) handle MH and Support. I know that Lunar got one applicant, and I don't know if Kal got any for mods.

If you're referring to a seperate announcement I made, I do believe I spoke to you about it (when I'm not at work I might have time to look out the logs). I had 5 people contacting me, and I took 3 of them. Ever since then, from what I remember, you've been quick to criticise the team and the game. I'm not sure if this is to make me feel better about not selecting you?
Anyway, this is getting a bit off topic :)

GReaper 25 Mar 2009 17:30

Re: Remove redundant historical features and simplify game
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Appocomaster (Post 3168411)
If you're referring to a seperate announcement I made, I do believe I spoke to you about it (when I'm not at work I might have time to look out the logs). I had 5 people contacting me, and I took 3 of them. Ever since then, from what I remember, you've been quick to criticise the team and the game. I'm not sure if this is to make me feel better about not selecting you?

You were the only one to actually respond (even though I had to ask you again). The other two times I never got any further replies. What bothers me isn't so much about me personally, but the fact that my experience seems to be repeated by other people in the thread I linked above.

It's just slightly amusing that you often claim there is nobody willing to help, when it's often hard to get a response when people do offer to help. You don't seem to do a good job at headhunting people, those who don't apply but flaunt obvious bits of talent

There are several people round here that show great knowledge of how the game works, how it worked in the past, along with great ideas of how to make the game better in future - get them involved. There are also people with decent graphics/UI skills, the game looks ugly and you need their help to do it - hire them.

_Kila_ 25 Mar 2009 17:56

Re: Remove redundant historical features and simplify game
 
Agreeing with most/all of Appoco's post.

I've an idea for the portal though - you could have players submitting pieces of writing to put up on it. Something like a blog - some players can submit overviews of politics and competing allies like the logbook Lokken used to do, others can write fan fiction about the game. I'm sure there'll be some members willing to contribute and it'll be nice for new players to read and encourage them to submit stuff and get more involved. Just a thought :)

Appocomaster 25 Mar 2009 18:03

Re: Remove redundant historical features and simplify game
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by GReaper (Post 3168424)
You were the only one to actually respond (even though I had to ask you again). The other two times I never got any further replies. What bothers me isn't so much about me personally, but the fact that my experience seems to be repeated by other people in the thread I linked above.

It's just slightly amusing that you often claim there is nobody willing to help, when it's often hard to get a response when people do offer to help. You don't seem to do a good job at headhunting people, those who don't apply but flaunt obvious bits of talent

There are several people round here that show great knowledge of how the game works, how it worked in the past, along with great ideas of how to make the game better in future - get them involved. There are also people with decent graphics/UI skills, the game looks ugly and you need their help to do it - hire them.

-Commerical reasons generally require graphics people to sign a waiver. that cuts a lot of people out
-Developers/coders can't really be involved in an alliance. That cuts no end of people out
-Most people say "I'm willing to help" but few have the time to do it for long periods of time under their own steam. I am not interested in spending all my time trying to find jobs for people to fit into the 2 hours a week they can spare for Planetarion. I am interested in people who can spend 2 hours a day proactively helping to design and/or create things without me constantly watching them.
Also, we don't often headhunt because we ourselves are on a limited timeframe (I leave for work at 7am and get back at 7.30-8.30 each evening) and anyone who doesn't want to seek out and get involved probably won't have the motivation to work without constant prodding from me.

Heartless 25 Mar 2009 18:09

Re: Remove redundant historical features and simplify game
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by _Kila_ (Post 3168429)
Agreeing with most/all of Appoco's post.

I've an idea for the portal though - you could have players submitting pieces of writing to put up on it. Something like a blog - some players can submit overviews of politics and competing allies like the logbook Lokken used to do, others can write fan fiction about the game. I'm sure there'll be some members willing to contribute and it'll be nice for new players to read and encourage them to submit stuff and get more involved. Just a thought :)

This has been tried time and time again, but it looks like there are hardly any people left which actually care about such things.

Gate 25 Mar 2009 18:53

Re: Remove redundant historical features and simplify game
 
Get rid of M/C/E and just have roids and resources!

Back to comment on more later.

GReaper 26 Mar 2009 03:52

Re: Remove redundant historical features and simplify game
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Appocomaster (Post 3168402)
The e-mail sent when you sign up contains lots of useful information, before you even log in to the game. It's not my fault you don't read it

I don't think anyone reads it. You've probably had over 2,000 registrations and this is the email that gets sent out:

Quote:

Helpful links:

Our online FAQ is located at
http://game.planetarion.com/manual.php?page=34 and is helpful if you have problems loging in.

We now have a hefty "Online Help" section located at http://game.planetarion.com/manual.php?page=32, and
a basic startup guide and terminology section (for those who haven't played before) at http://game.planetarion.com/manual.php?page=5.

If you're confused by all the terminology, there's a larger terminology section at
http://www.clawofdarkness.com/pawiki...ry:Terminology .

In addition to our portal (http://www.planetarion.com) and our forums (http://pirate.planetarion.com), we also have many other community sites, some of which
are listed at http://www.planetarion.com/manual/ma...nityresources/.
Many people find the "Battle Calculators" in particular useful for simulating combat before attacking someone.
All of the manual page links go to the wrong pages, the community resources page is dead, the PAwiki link points to a page which isn't working (it is out of your control though).

I think it's fair to say that nobody reads it, not even to check. The last thing you want to do is read that boring email full of text when you've got your password, you just want to login and check the game out.

Cochese 26 Mar 2009 03:59

Re: Remove redundant historical features and simplify game
 
Perhaps a modified page that links to the "proper" info, displayed in the MOTD region, when you FIRST login to your account?

Or further, a short "tutorial"/manual description of stuff on each page (Overview/fleets/mission/res/cons/etc) that last for a couple ticks when you FIRST login?

MrLobster 26 Mar 2009 04:42

Re: Remove redundant historical features and simplify game
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by GReaper (Post 3168489)
I don't think anyone reads it. You've probably had over 2,000 registrations and this is the email that gets sent out:

All of the manual page links go to the wrong pages, the community resources page is dead, the PAwiki link points to a page which isn't working (it is out of your control though).

I think it's fair to say that nobody reads it, not even to check. The last thing you want to do is read that boring email full of text when you've got your password, you just want to login and check the game out.

This day and age we have stupidly fast internet connections, and we can now do things like send out HTML emails, with things called pictures i'll have you know :)

Mzyxptlk 26 Mar 2009 11:39

Re: Remove redundant historical features and simplify game
 
I love how the "online help" link takes you to the formulae section.

Heartless 26 Mar 2009 11:59

Re: Remove redundant historical features and simplify game
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by MrLobster (Post 3168496)
This day and age we have stupidly fast internet connections, and we can now do things like send out HTML emails, with things called pictures i'll have you know :)

... which then again will be filtered out by most spam filters because no sane human being wants to use HTML and, even worse, pictures in e-Mails. So unless there are two versions available of it, it will cause issues for a lot of people.

M0RPH3US 26 Mar 2009 15:41

Re: Remove redundant historical features and simplify game
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by _Kila_ (Post 3168429)
Agreeing with most/all of Appoco's post.
I've an idea for the portal though - you could have players submitting pieces of writing to put up on it. Something like a blog - some players can submit overviews of politics and competing allies like the logbook Lokken used to do, others can write fan fiction about the game. I'm sure there'll be some members willing to contribute and it'll be nice for new players to read and encourage them to submit stuff and get more involved. Just a thought :)

i´d be willing to write an essay about how this round developed, and why asc wins in the end, though they had the most incs all round
dunno if everyone would like it...

and i am pretty confident, there is some more ppl willing to write stuff

there could also be blogs about certain nights of specialized attacks (if it happens at all)

so many ppl are writing tons and tons of stuff on the forums, why not have parts of this on the portal, so a new guy loading the portal will see that the game is alive (just posts about downtimes dont really help it)

M0RPH3US 26 Mar 2009 15:45

Re: Remove redundant historical features and simplify game
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Gate (Post 3168449)
Get rid of M/C/E and just have roids and resources!

Back to comment on more later.

i dont think this is the right way tbh

the game doesnt need removal of loads of stuff, it needs stuff added
so instead of complaining (rightfully) that 3 ressources are not needed, as 1 would be enough, implement something for those 2 other ressources.

ofc this cant be done all of a sudden, but my point is that the new vision of PA, needs more stuff to do, not less.

Edit: yes i know the old PA is a simple game, at least everyone remember it as one, but thats 10 years ago, the customers of today want more then what was available 10 years ago. (yes loads of veterans, i am sure don´t want more, they want their r3 code PA and 100k players, but thats so not gonna happen, so imo we rather loose 100 hardcores and gain 500 newbs, then the other way round)

Pacman was an awesome game, but nowadays no one would even bother with it, times change, the people change, people want gfx, and if not gfx they want multiple options(micro management) to develope their planet
not have 1 resource, send/recall fleets, init roids, click research, click construction, wait for the fleet to get back home
we won´t be increasing the playbase with this concept, so removing, prelaunch, covops, 2 resources, population will not be the right path to go

Gate 27 Mar 2009 07:00

Re: Remove redundant historical features and simplify game
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by M0RPH3US (Post 3168537)
Pacman was an awesome game, but nowadays no one would even bother with it,

That's not quite true: Pacman Championship Edition was released to great reviews, although I don't have sales figures.

However, Geometry Wars is a simple game and its sales are measured in the low hundreds of thousands. Not every game has to be an overcomplicated masterpiece with 'normal mapping' and 'vertex shading', it depends on your market.

I really don't think adding features for the sake of keeping M/C/E, or anything of the sort is the way to improve the game. PA is already pretty deep, but it could achieve pretty much exactly the same level of depth with a few of its old antiques (like M/C/E) being cut out. As far as I can see this would only have the effect of making it more accessible. A good thing, right?


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