Pa is dying
 

Low number of active players, piggy all over the place, no real tactic involved, bashing lowbies gets you in the top10, alliances try to exploit every grey zone in the rules... isn't it time for some drastic mesures ?

- introduce non playing planets to increase the universe size (defended with PDS, no attack fleet). Place them in the galaxies with an incentive to defend them (NPP host Platinum roids giving + x % to the whole gal - cumulative if you steal those of other gals)
- change the races for a branched tech tree (see Gates test), with multiple targeting
- raise the bash limit
- place all the planets out of tag in autogenerated alliances (good for noobs)
- hardcode a treaty system between alliances (War-Neutral-Allied)
- re-introduce quests

ah, now i feel better :p

Re: Pa is dying
 

Interesting idea to increase the universe without* the use of bots. But if those NPPs do not have a fleet and no "bot" alike logic to use fleet i fear that it would be very easy to exploit the NPPs for some kind of farming.

How do you want to avoid/lessen this problem with NPPs?

signed, signed and signed. Quests where one of the best changes this game ever had IMHO.

* i think you would need at least a bit of programmed logic which handles those planets. Controls their size in roids and their PDS size/type. You would also need some PATEAM people monitoring them to see if they get seriously exploited in some way which affects the game. So this suggestion would technically be like a downsized bot solution.

Re: Pa is dying
 

Bring back the quests!
They were nice and gave new ppl a place to start and learn the game. Planetarion is noob-unfriendly, so we need some sort of way to get ppl into the game.
Some suggestions for quests:
- a quest that guides ppl on how to construct their fleet and what kind of targets to attack (for example for xan: build vsh & daggers and attack a terran player)
- a quest that tells you to get on irc, then the ministers have the ablility to check "irc quest completed" on politics page to finish the quest.
- join an alliance quest
...

Quests like this might actually help a new player get involved into the game and understanding the game mechanics faster and integrating them into the community.

Re: Pa is dying
 

And add quest rewards! It would encourage people to do these quests, as it gives them a resource boost, both for new players and old players alike.

Re: Pa is dying
 

I like these two ideas.

Re: Pa is dying
 

As far as im concerned two things can make this game better

1) more players
2) me winning :p

seriously tho all good suggestions could be implemented to improve game but PA needs to advertise itself i always see adverts for eve and WoW

Re: Pa is dying
 

Ofcourse there should be a reward for doing quests, just like we used to have rewards for quests.
Either in the form of roids, resources or xp.

Re: Pa is dying
 

i agree to,quests were a great way to start the round and help new people to learn the game,why this was taken away ill never know

Re: Pa is dying
 

I did love quests, altho i kinda miss the scanning for roids thing. I remember there were ways to get an extra roid via quests before the scanners got there ;)

Re: Pa is dying
 

one thing that may be of help to any planet, is to limit the number of incoming in a 8 hours period.
how many of us see 3-4-5-8-12 incoming fleet within a few hours lap of time. enough making defense impossible and bleeding dry the defending planet.

let s put a 3 fleet imcoming every 8 hours, so wether they re all together or spread out, a planet can hope to defend itself!

and the raise of bash limit is truly something i m lookinh up to.. i m getting fed up of seeing planet 100-500% my size trying to land on me on my pals.

Re: Pa is dying
 

Because then top alliances will get their mates to create little planets and send fleets with 1 ship in at their best players to make sure they can't be attacked by their enemies.

There's a few other reasons as well, but the first one should be enough.

Re: Pa is dying
 

To be honest PA isnt dying as such. Its just stagnent, nothing new is happening to "entice" / "make it easier for" new people to play. So bringing back quests would be a good idea, though i hope 1:1 has an easy way to empty his mail box ...think that was a quest last time :P

Re: Pa is dying
 

The problems faced are serious and very real.

First, this style of game is obsolete. It's old fashoned, and has completely lost it's novelty appeal. Yes, it can make great interactive gameplay, but most people outside the game either don't know about it, aren't willing to try it, or simply don't find it appealing.

As a knock on affect, most of the people who now play Planetarion, and particularly those who pay, are diehards who have been hooked and never escaped, or they are people who's friends have tried damn hard to bring them to the game. Either way, they play seriously. With a dwindling playerbase (albeit a slow reduction), the game becomes less and less fruitful for new players (especially those without contacts) and players who want to play the game casually.

A way around this is for the PA crew to make the game much more accessible from the point of view of a casual player (as they did in an XP heavy round), yet this would only serve to completely alienate the more traditional playerbase. As far as I can see, this is the only way forward for PA if they want to expand, but it's also a massive risk: If the core playerbase buggers off, and the marketing is either messed up or simply doesn't work, then the game will die a very quick death.

What agitates me the most about the current state of play is that the PA crew will happily spend days and months and years discussing 'what planetarion should be', primarily consulting those who read this forum (which has proven little help). They will expend serious thought and endless time on trying to resolve impossible and (let's face it) irrelevant issues such as the support planet rules. Yet behind all this 'activity', nothing is happening. The game is not progressing, and nor is it expanding. PAN has been promised for rounds, but is apparently still a non-starter. No serious decisions have been or are being taken as to the direction of the game, and no major advertising or marketing pushes have been made. Barely enough time is alotted between rounds to even derive a set of workable ship stats, nevermind actually developing the game (and giving people a decent rest).

Contrary to what it may seem for some people (myself included), Planetarion has a finite attraction: As someone put it very well elsewhere, people stay for the community and not for the game. The PA crew cannot afford for this to be the case much longer.

Makhil I like some of your ideas, I seriously dislike others. Unfortunately I don't see how any will actually help to generate any serious revival in either interest or player count. They might make things a bit more interesting for a bit longer, but revolution is what's needed and not evolution. Unfortunately, I don't think many of the more active players will like what they see if and when the game is revolutionised and relaunched.

Re: Pa is dying
 

Back in round 3 I joined because the game was a laugh, as it was free when I got bashed I didn't care. I missed rounds 5-17 and have paid for my account this time round and it stresses me out big time that I am bashed left right and centre. The other online games I play, CS and WoW, can be stressful, but the rewards of those games are more tangeble (and CS came with half life which is still one of my favourite games ever).
PA needs a rethink, it won't last long in its current form, after I use my last two credits it will be bye bye PA for me without a serious overhaul.

Re: Pa is dying
 

surely advertising wuld be a positive way forward, also maybe offer speed rounds once a month for new people only, thus giving them a small introduction to the game.

Re: Pa is dying
 

I doubt advertising would be cost effective and effective.

To advertise in say my local paper for one week with an advert (Birmingham Mail) it costs somewhere in the region of £1-3000 likewise advertising in general is quite lucrative and thus expensive. I also doubt many people would find a game like pa interesting when games like wow, eve etc are just as time consuming but more rewarding.

Speedgame wise I doubt many new players would sit around for 24 hours playing them, and it will just be dominated by groups of players from pa taking it seriously.

Re: Pa is dying
 

I guess if we knew who is paid by Jolt and how much, we would understand why so little is happening. Rounds income must barely pay for the expenses. Jolt must have said : "as long as the game pays for itself we keep running it, but no way we're going to invest anything in its development..."

Re: Pa is dying
 

Its the sad truth I believe, not much can be done with pa. The most exciting prospect I have seen so far in the last say 3 years was the WC speedgame where we had two very even races. Was like old school pa and was very enjoyable and balanced.

Re: Pa is dying
 

jolt dont care about pa and as long as they got it, it will be like this

Re: Pa is dying
 

The main problem is that Jolt don't run PA very well.

They are happy to make a reasonable amount of money (a few grand I would guess) by letting people run it for free.

They are unwilling to take a risk and invest in some professionals to redesign and recode the game and thus it is still running on the shameful markup of 1999.

Most people here should be aware of the memberbase of other 'stagnant outdated text based games', and know that 1500 isn't the highest active memberbase possible.

Everyone knows the digg effect - if the game was modern, attractive and more featured it'd can advertise itself.

Re: Pa is dying
 

I started playing in r3 when it was still free, just because of some rl friends were playing it and said it was a good laugh.
I got me hooked and kept playing till round 14 i think, after that i became less and less active, first scanner and then logging in once a week
At the moment i still have an account which i also login once a week to just see what the top5 alliances are..

Why did i 'quit'?
There are far more fun, challenging and creative games around these days with way more gameplay options and stuff. Also after playing so many rounds it gets boring to fight the same people and alliances round after round (low playerbase). The last rounds i played active was only because i was HC in LCH and liked the people in there and didnt want to let the down, not the fact the game was so awesome.

Just my personal experience :)

ps. I agree with the posters above regarding Jolt and the re-introducing of quests

Re: Pa is dying
 

For the most part this type of game does not appeal to many game players out there. Text based and strategy games are hard sells to most gammers.

I would like to see the Capture the Flag introduced in a regular round where the flags themselves would give the alliance holding them extra points. Points that based on the current Alliance score could be stolen over and over again. As an added effect to keep a small planet from holding onto a flag since nobody could land on them would be that the flag holders value would temporarily be equal to the universe average if that planet did not already have a value that was the universe average or higher.

Re: Pa is dying
 

The fact it's a simple web based game could be considered one of its main selling points. However the game does need updating to keep it fresh, as well as the main website which is supposed to advertise it. A typical example of how stale the game is would be the ingame skins, having a round 14 skin in round 18 is a bit pathetic.

Strongly agree.

There are many areas which need drastic improvements, all we get is a few minor changes every round. The current PA team is doing a reasonable job at keeping the game going, but nothing new has appeared for a long time.

jolt should be taking a much more active role in ensuring the game is being developed, instead of just leaving a few volunteers to come up with ideas which don't get implemented.

Re: Pa is dying
 

Its not that they don't care. PA is probably the only place besides a half-way house for homeless people, where someone is always complaining, but you get those same people coming back no matter what. Jolt have PA running on the first ever gaming server, that gets skipped over when the techs come in to do maintenance. PA money is only profit because they have this crazy rare group of people that work for free. Imagine you have a server in your bedroom under your bed, and 1500 people pay you every 3 months to play some game on it. :rolleyes:

I don't think the features of PA is what is hurting it, I think the entire game engine itself. PA should have expanded. PA should have been EVE or something.

Re: Pa is dying
 

quoted so someone reads this again and notes it's truth

Re: Pa is dying
 

Can't be emphasised enough.

Re: Pa is dying
 

i have a few suggestions myself

introduce 3 more fleets but these can only be researched and it takes away something, example are
4 fleets - unable to research hypergate
5 fleets - unable to research hypergate and produce Battleships and Cruiser
6 fleets - unable to research hypergate, Battleships and Cruisers and fleet scan

Zik - only has 2 or 3 types of ships that can steal, i.e. one type of Battleship that steal Destroyers or Cruiser's

Cat - only have 2 or 3 types of ships that can freeze ships, i.e. one type of Destroyers that freeze Cruiser's or Battleships

Xan\Ter - have the ability to 'teleport' ships back to the attackers base but have a 10 tick (or how ever long it would take to return) inactive period, also these cant be attacked if the planet has incoming with in the 10 ticks and again make only 2 or 3 types of ships that can do this

Salvage decreases the bigger your are, so if the attacking planet is say what ever percentage bigger than the planets who is getting attacked the planet gets that percentage or set pre % bands i.e. if the attacking planet is 90% bigger than the planet who is getting attack, the attacked planet would receive 75% salvage or if the attacking planet was say 74% bigger than the planet who's getting attacked, the accked planet would only get 50%

Ship salvage from stolen ships is set at 25% no matter what size, as the current no salvage from stolen ships is a little unfair on defending planets\fleets

Zik race to have a 10% cap on all ships stolen

Bring back the resource bonus for ministers, 2500 each for GC and 1000 for the others, and say a 5% bonus if they do there job right

PA could be more a bit more fair and also could attact new players and keep players playing, with a little more interest and tactical

Re: Pa is dying
 

Ergh, hate the idea of non-player-planets! Ive always been fond of lowering the bash limit thou, but im biased on that front of things :(

Re: Pa is dying
 

This sort of post is exactly what's WRONG with PA development. Fiddling around with small details is NOT going to suddenly attract lots of new players (OR keep them) - yet that's about all PA Team seem capable of doing. The problems are more fundamental than how many fleet slots people have or what precisely the salvage rates are.

Re: Pa is dying
 

Maybe its about time that PA introduced some tactics for a change, you know get the old brain working, and maybe different routes would do that, bring more enjoyment out of the game and more interest instead of having the same thing someone else has 100 places up

here's another idea,

introducing different 'structures' and 'research' for different races and each race has more pro's and cons like Ter could mine more resources from factories but cant pass news scan and cant mine more than 800 roids, while Zik can get up to fleet scan but can't use more than 100 constructions and only has covert ops


the way things are going the top players staying at the 'top' and the new players leaving after a few weeks and get put in c200 or into a galaxy of players that hardly play, why what fun that is

Re: Pa is dying
 

Quit tinkering with the numbers and tell Jolt that all of pateam will quit if they don't get their heads out of the sand and sort something out.

The game needs a recode and a new brand.

How Jolt can run a business like this is ridiculous, with volunteers earning them money, and with no disrespect I think in part pateam are naive for working for free.

Re: Pa is dying
 

"Ive always been fond of lowering the bash limit thou" --->LukeyLove

you really think that lowering an already low bashing limit gonna attack players? try being the one getting bashed day in day out in a weak or medium galaxy.. for a full round, then we ll talk...

as say the bash limit should be upped, or penalty to score put in so bigger planet fight decent planet.. not hopelessly undefendable target!

give the new player/ low player a chance to grow and learn.. not blast then to oblivion and dislike of a game we want to grow..

Re: Pa is dying
 

Try being the one with 10 targets, 8 of which are in your galaxy and/or alliance, then we'll talk...

Re: Pa is dying
 

i say we need to reduce the number of players in the galaxies to spread the incs abit more, and to lessen the piggyback effect. How about starting out with 7 players in each galaxy and take it from there?

Re: Pa is dying
 

arfy.. you make me cry... cant find a planet with enough roid on your size? i ll help you find some.. just give me your value and fleet composition..

really.. if bashing is the way planetarion want to go.. then you ll be playing with 100 ppls in a few years.. cause no one like to be bash round in, round out.

big players that can cant attack someone in top 150 (i mean top 100) are either just lazy or cowards i say.. .. being big means you ll get more incomings which, with your ally and gal mate should be easy enough to defend.. but when you re defenseless, there s no way an alliance or galaxy is gonna waste ressource to help you, cause they probably cant help anyway!

advocating for more bashing will only kill the interest of new and medium players...

Re: Pa is dying
 

By "big" do you mean people in the top100, or big as in the top10? As atm the 10th placed person only has 100 possible targets within his bash, thus could not possibly hit outside of the top100.

I suppose by definition #1 is a nasty basher :(

Re: Pa is dying
 

With NPP's it also helps out the p[layers that have started half way throguh the rd.... to have a chance of getting up to the top.....

the problem is with this is how long is it allowed to go on for..

also we need to go back to the old style of tech tree and reintroduce ...If u go down one bracnch u cant go down the other.

as as for ther p2p online game i belong to 2 of them as well CoH/V and RFO
and what exactly does jolt do cept from take money from us... ive been playing for eons in this game and a couple of rds i have drop out coz of the stats ..... Im noe finding other games which tbh are more friendly based and not so hardcore as this game is. but i will still play this game and one day hope that these probs are sorted out and actually smt is done bout taking this game forward ... but multi targeting ... is old school ... i thought we were moving forward not back

Re: Pa is dying
 

Typical F-Crew whinging. You do realise that people are meant to attack you? Without a strong alliance or good galaxy backing you up (preferably both) then of course you will be roided. I have a decent rank and yet my entire galaxy bar 2 people are orange. I am roided all the time which forces me to use tactics based around having a low resource income.

It seems to me you are not making the best of the situation, preferring instead to bitch and moan. If you want a top rank then join an alliance other than F-Crew and take the time to build a strong buddypack of decent players instead of just friends. Then take the time to organise what each type of fleet player builds, which defships are available, who will cover nightshifts, dayshifts, evenings. Who will DC when incs happen etc etc.

Re: Pa is dying
 

I think the problem is for a new player PA is hard to play and to compete with us Good players, lets face it probably 80% of PA players know how to play proplerly the other 20% dont and will leave unless there dedicated.

Us having players what 10 rounds on average will spend a long time on irc, if you were new to a game would you chose PA where u look at a chat client to be active or eVe or WoW where its graphically attractive i know what i would choose.

PA used to be good as a new player could be average when we used to have 10k to 15k planets it was fun now with what 2k max planets were all to good. We have maxed out the game and basically new players dont have a chance and wont chose to play it

thats what i think

Re: Pa is dying
 

Thing is there are more games to choose from on pcs or gaming consoles which do not require you to spend your life playing them. Lets face it planetarion takes up a lot of time and requires you to be active at obcene hours of the night (europeans). Don't get me wrong, I love this game, its awesome but its not practical and there are some pretty sweet alternatives.

In my opinion we need new ownership because I haven't really seen Jolt putting much effort into promotion or development. They're quite happy sitting back and allowing this game to generate a few thousand pounds a year. They don't have to pay anyone to run it, all the staff do it because they want to and the cost of the servers must be pretty minimal... Its sad for us...
________
AVANDIA LAWYER

Re: Pa is dying
 

if PA turns to PAN it might live but expecting people to develop it for free is silly, Jolt needs to pay people to run the game, but the chances of that are as likely as seeing an American bald eagle trying to catch a dodo

Re: Pa is dying
 

Thats pretty uncool. How can Jolt not pay the coder? I'm sure they pay the coder... I mean Jolt couldn't allow someone to spend a huge amount of time coding something like that and not compensate them... Could they?
________
COLORADO MEDICAL MARIJUANA

Re: Pa is dying
 

lol:S Whoops, i read the original thread wrong.. i thought he was proposing lowering the bash limit not raising it :S Well i think ppl have to consider the players at the top of the rankings as well, gets abit boring for some towards the end when theres a severely limited list they physically hit and when alliances and naps are brought into account a possibly even smaller amount!

Re: Pa is dying
 

Nothing forces top planets to nap the universe.

Re: Pa is dying
 

Exiling should be drastically reduced (as pointed out in a PD thread).
What was trying to get some new or unexperienced player to at least join IRC and attack a little bit in the past, and eventually get him really involved, simply because he is in your Galaxy which you want to grow, is like "Do we have 3 people online? - Ye - Ye - Ye - K, appointed, go vote pls" now.

Free planets should be given more options I guess tho. With what they have now, they hardly get a taste of the game, or can join an alliance or whatever. And blindly paying isn't really what people do I guess.

I'm not an expert in marketing and stuff I guess, but shouldn't there at least be some methods that don't cost in the end.
A freaky Youtube vid probably won't work for PA, but with all those people who seem to have alot of time, shouldn't there be something of the kind to come up with, and those people rewared, may it be just with free credits or whatever..
Or simple affiliate programs for webmasters or just for normal guys (who get others to sign up entering their email as referrer), where you get one credit (or simply money, as it doesn't matter anyway) for 3-5 referred payers or whatever..

As said I'm not into that stuff (at least not in the non-porn area ha ha, there affiliates programs work excellent tho), but I don't see Anything at all that's done (ok, the Game of the Month thing), and this is just an example.


I agree that it's truly annoying how there's weeks of discussion about Alliance Scanner Funds or whatever that was, which still is on the Overview for about a Month now, which has close to zero actual effect on the Gameplay from my view.
Ofc I'm not really in an Alliance so I can't enjoy all those excellent features, but jeez all they do is Scan. People have scanned since Round 1, without all these freaky features. And it worked, didn't it.
Those Alliance guys are already playing and probably paying, or do you think there would be mass quittages if you didn't implement the Alliance Scanner Fund right now.


The bash limit, in my eyes, should be stricter aswell.. Maybe base it on rank rather than on score/value (now as XP isn't as extreme anymore), so you can only attack people max. 100-200 ranks below you or whatever.
"Top people" shouldn't complain about no targets or whatever, as it's solely their Alliances' fault to nap with everyone.
We bitched more than everyone aswell when legion, furby and reborn were together in round3, roided all of the universe, and had nothing left to hit. Until we, brave as we were, decided to attack Reborn. Hoorray.

Re: Pa is dying
 

Oh please, stop those 'PA is dying'....

We all know it, its been said since round 5, PA is still here. Everything dies at some point

End of discussion, end of wasting time.

P.S.: If your intention was to suggest a good i idea, i suggest a more positive post, and please post all ideas seperate, or it will be a mess

Re: Pa is dying
 

Erm, its not the bash limit fellas. The issue is that not many people play serious anymore. Thus smaller planets. Thus the people who are playing serious only have a small pool of players to attack. Each other. Thats the way it should be if you think about it.

Re: Pa is dying
 

well.. i do think the "bash limit " have an effect on new and low level player.. i dare you to note the guys inthe rank 800 and less that will signed up next round.. i m pretty sure we ll see a drop in their numbers.. as well as in the mid level (rank 250-600) as they re getting attack by player 2m 3m 4 time their value.. i heard player say they wont be returning next round, cause it s a waste od time to play this game (build ships and construction, and seeing destroyed by players who are far larger than themselves) !

the fact that players who are very big can raid and obliterate other ppls fleet/construction/roid with inpunity is a bad thing.. as new player get dishearten and their spirirt and interest crushed...

and i m not even talking about some alliances politic (making pack within the top 10) or the ongoing nap.. or the scheduled multi raid vs 1 planet (4-8-20 fleet attacking the same planet till there s nothing left!)

those kind of behavior will only hurt the player base as more see abuse..

Re: Pa is dying
 

Please rop1964 - try to see things realistically. The point of this game is to own the most militarily powerful planet that you can. You need to feed down the line, you need to make your fleet have the best composition that you can for your number of roids. Everybody gets roided and gets on with it.

P.S. At first I thought "this guy must be a vegetarian - he doesn't like killing things smaller than himself such as a chicken or a sausage". But now I see you're just a retard who wouldn't eat vegetables because they can't defend themselves. RIGHT?!

Re: Pa is dying
 

Best post i think ive ever read of yours arfy.

Talking of bashing i got mailed by some idiot who said hed help me play pa as clearly i have no idea attacking planets who have only just come out of protection to get the much craved freshly initiated roids. The more roids you have the better unless ofcourse your 1up and just steal everyone elses ships instead then crash your fleets and start again. Who says xp is no longer about