Private Rounds
 

OK so this may have been suggested before but a quick search yielded no results.

I realise this would be a potentially monumental task in setup and backend server additions/edits but I feel if supported by the PA community could bring some more life back to PA. It'd certainly bring me back for instance.

What I am suggesting is for groups of players to purchase, in the same manner as credits, their own "round" of Planetarion. This would be a private game for them and them alone thus allowing decisions such as stats, alliances, tick speed and duration to be made by them. I could explain the advantages of this but I think it's pretty self explanatory to any longterm PA player. (eg "Wooo playing with people who don't all want to get up at 4am").

There are however some major considerations which is why I've made this thread as there would be limitations. The whole idea may be completely impractical - I'm not familiar with the PA code, how efficient it is, how its stored etc but there would certainly need to be an easy method to deploy a new game and things like working out how they'll be hosted will prove troublesome for Lunar I'm sure. So this may already be a none starter.

Things i'd see as necessary requirements prior to ordering a "round":
- Round Duration (longer round requires longer hosting)
- Tick speed (Min time req i suspect as serverload will increase)
- Number of players
- Special game requirements (alliances disabled for eg)

I think, with this information a price should be calculable as each one directly affects server requirements and I can't think of anything else at this moment in time that would. I suspect it'd be significantly more than a credit, but for a private round with what will obviously be an upgraded planet by default I can see myself willing to pay a reasonable amount more within reason.

I could ramble about why I think this is a good idea but its pretty pointless if its impossible from an administration perspective so I will leave this here and wait for our overlords to weigh in.

Oh one quick thought: I have considered the overworking of MH, but I think most of us could agree that we'd be happy to self police a private game and multiple planets would be impossible (with the player limit). So, I think from a staff perspective we just need to keep the server hamsters happy.

EDIT: Quick examples of possible games:

Normal game between 20-30 people, priv gals no alliances.
Speed game of 72 hours with 5 minute ticks (i say 5 because i don't know how much shorter ticks will affect server load)
Marathon game of 12 months with 4 hour ticks.

Re: Private Rounds
 

i like the basic idea. would need to see what the costs are.

issues:

1) cheating - i think no issue as you would be choosing to play in certain private rounds and have to abide by the 2/3 people those involved have accepted as running it. but sure, they would need someone to close people if they asked.

2) player fragmentation - some would be concerned about this but not me. i think it could help keep more players around and improve the main game. could also, potential, produce some great shipstats if people could use their own.

3) would need the ability to turn off/on alliances, limit alliances or not, BP size or none.

4) shuffle - needed if people havent set like all private 3 man gals or something.

nothing else atm. overall, could be a great idea and bring in more money to PA. this in turn, could lead to better/more development of the game.

Re: Private Rounds
 

With regards to player fragmentation I dismissed it due to the game being a slow paced game anyway. With the main game taking 1 hour ticks most players would have plenty of time to log into a second or even third game and play those too.

Some may disagree (hello DCs!) but we'll see what people think.

Re: Private Rounds
 

just thought of something. To avoid any multies/allow them but be less bothered, there would be a charge per planet. That charge could be 1 credit, or whateva is set by the private round "owner". This would potentially cover some cost for the round "owner" and also make it cost to multi.

There would, ofc, need to be a change in PA credit costs. i.e. every planet in a private round costs 1 credit, upgraded planet in "proper round" costs 3 credits etc etc

Re: Private Rounds
 

Back in the day when PA became pay to play for the first time, I left and played Star-fury. It was a nice game (albeit a LOT simpler than PA) with a 2k player base.
It faced pretty much the same problems as PA does now, one of which was the slowly declining playerbase.
At one point, the owner of the game decided to add a fast ticking server - at first to turn only between rounds. Eventually both servers turned at the same time and of the 500 players that were still around at that time, half played on each server.

An elaborate way of saying : I have experienced that this will decimate the amount of people playing on "main" server.
Oddly Star-fury still exists to this day, but it got very close to its end. What was main server back then, no longer exists.
It's not something I want to see happening to PA.

Re: Private Rounds
 

That's not what we're suggesting though, we're not asking for a second public server. The people who want rank recognition, EoRCs, the continuation of multi-round long alliance politics and blocking will continue to play the main game. Also, PA ran a speed serve alongside the maingame for *years* until Jagex dropped serving it.

Whilst I acknowledge the risks, the games playerbase has been declining for years anyway - I don't even play myself anymore. PA has switched hands multiple times and nearly met its end recently so I'd argue thats a trend of browser games and not just the change you saw made in Star Fury.

It is quite possible that most people wouldn't want this and that to me is what needs to be decided more than anything. If the players think its a good suggestion that should be more important than whether we think it'll kill the game because at this point not doing anything with the game is killing it more.

Re: Private Rounds
 

So who you're after are europeans who play planetarion at work, don't dare about their rank, simple solo raids and little player interaction?

Re: Private Rounds
 

We'll look at bringing back the 30 second tick speedgame server soon (I need to set it up when I get a minute), but allowing a decent amount of customisation through the front end required for this (including things like shuffling) would be hard without development - there's still a degree of manual server script stuff being run, etc.

If we did ever have something like this, it would just be a flat charge of x credits for a weekend or something.

It's interesting to hear that a similar game tried to split everything up and it didn't work - something to bare in mind, I think. We want to unify, not splinter (e.g. not many people use these forums, getting people back on here would be good).

Re: Private Rounds
 

World cup speedgame weekend!

Re: Private Rounds
 

nice one PA team :)