Why all the fuss??

[Jonas]

I can't understand why people are so upset just because they have to pay for the game. I mean, its NOTHING ... I just wanted to make a thread where i support the PA crew, as there are just lame flamings threads where addicet retards whine about never coming back...

p2p makes the whole game alot more fun, and even. as most of the cheaters are gone, and the ones left seem(experience from last round) to be caught pretty often... The creators need to find a way to recruit new players, I would suggest they go back to the test accounts...but with one change...Free test/trial accounts cannot be attacked by paid accounts, and paid accounts cannot be attacked by free accounts( they can defend each other) This would avoid farming and bashing...the newbies could experience a universe as it is, but without the bashing etc...ofc set a limit for theese accounts and such...

anyway, I just want to tell the lot sof you, and not least, the Creators <-- :xmas: I really appericiate this game, and I dont see the fee as much, nor a problem to pay... I rather play a planetarion with 4k players, and less cheating, than any other game with more cheaters and more players...

Merry Christmas to the lot of you...Just think about what the creators did for you, stop whining and moaning, and play if you want to. IT CANNOT BE THE MONEY THAT STOPS YOU! If you dont want to play, then fine...DONT ...but stop writing up and down on the boards about it

HAVE FUN

/me goes back to f00d and ps2...

-Jonas-

[Kloopy]

Thank you very much Jonas. Its threads like these that keep up all putting the work in to Planetarion. Its nice to occasionally hear that someone does actually appreciate everything.

Having said that, its not just us, its a joint effort, between the Creators, PA team and the players. In fact, the players are probably the most important part of it all.

Have fun on the PS2 and have a fantastic Christmas mate. All the best.

Matthew

[Coffee]

Imo, Planetarion simply isnt value for money. People generally dont like paying for things they dont think are value for money.

Instead of telling people that they should be happy to be paying, instead you should be making sure planetarion appears as ... value for money! find out why people _dont_ think it is and address the issue.

After all ~180,000 people cant really all be wrong?

[Kloopy]

If you dont think its value for money, then speak up. I for one am wanting to hear views from everyone about everything Planetarion related.

Reply here, send me a board PM, talk to me on IRC or send me an email ( [email protected] ). Do something to make yourself heard. You do have an input.

Matt

[Coffee]

The game looks like ****, the styles vary radically due to the lack of one person maintaining and auditing all non-user content (and the freebie nature means you wont get someone for nothing either), the lack of a decent manual, documentation or introduction (see first point), a chronic lack of communication (wtf is going on, who is sim-tech, will rd 9 be free, what about the beta? who really owns pa? etc) the fact your charging for something that was free means you need to add an incentive to pay. The game code is dodgy + buggy, the game is unbalanced and built with tacked on features to fix problems rather than fixing problems, the creators are too scared to depart from 'the norm' too much or remove features that are obviously crap. Multi-testing is frankly a joke, nobody has confidence in the creators to keep their word, the game is at contant risk of getting changed mid round - sorry the game didnt change the manual was wrong (: the officials are generally abusive power trippers and arse licking gets you further than actual work. And in general blame is put on the users, not the creators and the game is looking backwards in design rather than forwards. Claiming your fixing things now also falls under the category of 'no confidence' as words dont cut it anymore.

Thats a few to get you started (-:

[Coffee]

And really how much trouble would it be to throw up a splash page saying 'Round 9 under development' as anyone who doesnt know the exact url to the boards will think the site has gone totally?

[Kloopy]

That was a harsh post Coffee, but I'll try to answer most of your points... Firstly, I can only apologies for the lack of communication, but as you can hopefully understand we've needed to keep most things quite whilst the bidding was taking place and whilst we were not sure on the details ourselves.

The real owners of Planetarion are Sim Tech now. They are a gamaing company. Jolt, the massive online mutiplayer company (www.jolt.co.uk) are to host the game. To be completely honest, I'm not 100% sure on the connection between the two, but I will find out as soon as I can.

I can tell you now that unfortuately round 9 will not be free. Its just not feasable.

You're right, the code is currently not that great, it works, some might say well, but fixes are just patched into the code. Round 9 will have to use this code however, since we want to give you something to do whilst we work on the first new style round of Planetarion. Planetarion round 10 will be recoded from scratch, it will be coded properly and stuctured well so that updates and fixes can go in with minimal problems.

Since round 9 will be largely the same as round 8, there wont be any beta testing. We're just waiting for details from Jolt about the hosting, so we can setup the servers and get the game ready. This is also the reason why we dont have a temporary splash screen on the www.planetarion.com domain. But beta testing will be run fairly and well organised when it comes to it for Round 10, you have my word.

With this whole ethic of starting from scratch, we will be ready to make drastic changes, we're ready to drop those crap features and bring in ones we've wanted to for a very long time. We're ready to get rid of 'the norm' problem you speak of. This also will be the requested benefit to paying. I cant tell you about the ideas we've had for round 10, but it will be so much fun, I'm excited already and round 9 hasnt even started.

As for the rest of the games community, I can assure you there is a fantastic team of volunteers working as Planetarion Team, doing the manual, introduction, styles, etc, they do a great job. And we will be working very closely with them from now on to make Round 10 professional and make everyone proud to be part of it all.

As for changes mid round, they only ever happened in the most necessary cases, they were very rare. And the manual and game will always be totally correct and they will compliment each other now. As I said we will be working very close to PA Team to make Round 10 fantastic.

Trust me, I've been in PA Team for a very large number of months now, if not over a year, and there is not a single power abusing person there. Asmittedly, there might be people who do silly things, like get drunk and do some silly bans on IRC or something, but power abuse never happens on a large scale, we wont stand for it.

Arse licking does not get you further, I started by being offered a job coding the old portal, I was then invited into Pateam, I was then invited to code AH and the current portal. I've tried not to arse lick at any point in my Planetarion 'Career'. The most recent development was that I was invited to join the team of Creators... that completely surprised me, I hadnt even crossed my mind.

As for the claim that we're moving backwards not forwards and placing the blame in the wrong place. Perhaps that was true of old style Planetarion. I've already said, we're starting from scratch for round 10, things are going to change... for the better.

[zenopus]

Nice post.

Originally posted by Jonas
... test accounts...but with one change...Free test/trial accounts cannot be attacked by paid accounts, and paid accounts cannot be attacked by free accounts( they can defend each other) This would avoid farming and bashing...the newbies could experience a universe as it is, but without the bashing etc...ofc set a limit for these accounts and such...

Sounds like you are suggesting putting free accounts in with paid accounts. That would be my recommendation as well.
What a multi would do;
use multi accounts to escort him on raids or for sending fake attacks,
use multi accounts to defend him,
use multi accounts to spy on galaxies,
build up one free account by farming his other free accounts, then pay for the artificially inflated account.

The only way to prevent the first two (might work for all of them) is in the selection process - limit who can get a free account.
Free account spying could be eliminated by not giving free accounts full access to the Galaxy Status screen - if a spy cannot see friendlies/hostiles for the paid planets in the galaxy...
The last scenario could be thwarted by setting some relative limits on free accounts - for instance; a free planet would stop earning resources if it has more roids than the average planet, after all, free accounts are supposed to be for new players, they are not likely to be better than half (-ish) the established player base.

[Coffee]

Admittedly I havn't had a single thing to do with pa for about a year, but I have been there since the start and have seen exactly the promises you've made being made before, and repeatedly broken.

Its a case of deeds not words + excuses - and at the moment things are not looking good.

I seriously hope that things are going to change but honestly I just dont see it - mainly due to the fact that there hasn't been any beta testing announcements and www.planetarion.com points nowhere (a placeholder of even to home.pa would be fine and take 2 minutes!).

And an anouncement needs to be made on who is sim-tech, whats their role and whats happening with planetarion.

[Dave]

Rather harsh coffee.

If as you say, the game is so awfull, why did so many people play it?

And as to your point about buggy code or poor servers, I simply point you to rounds 3 and 4. Servers were down at points each day, mil screen was allways unreachable at major launch times, and there were a hell of a lot more bugs back then than now. Still, there were ~180k planets, which showed they were doing something right.

As for your comments on the interface, sure it may just be plain html and graphics, but it certainly doesnt look like ****! I'm quite sure the people who spent many, many hours making them wouldnt like to have their great work dismissed so eagerly. PA's graphics have allways been good (imo), and while they have differed from round to round, who says that is a bad thing? It gives you something to wonder about between rounds.

Now moving onto your point about who actually owns Planetarion. Why do we need to know, and in all honesty does it really matter? What matters is that Planetarion will still be managed by the people who know it best - the creators of it. They wont have to worry about the financial side, which hopefully means they will be able to deliver far more (plus its nice to know you will get paid). Finaly, if you (or anyone else for that matter) actually wanted to know about Sim-Tech, a quick look on google would have sorted you out.

To sum up the crap I posted at 1am. Planetarion is, was and allways has been great, filled with ups and downs, and no matter what will allways remain the game of its genre.

[randal]

i guess "hardcore players" people would be more willing to pay for a universe like in r3/4, with 150k people to bash, without getting deffed on every ****ty attack.. while paying to play with 2k other "hardcore players" who get def all the time, and 2k people you can't attack cause of the score cap isn't really worth it..
the problem with p2p was anyway that it simply hunted tenthousands of players away..
while it wouldn't have been sooo hard to figure out a system where payers would have had a good advantage, but free planets would still be fully playable..

[randal]

Originally posted by Kloopy
I can tell you now that unfortuately round 9 will not be free. Its just not feasable.

not free, like no free fully playable accounts?
whats the predictions, 700 players? i'd bet it would be around that..
horray..

[Scoot951]

I played PA for 6 rounds (see sig ). For 3-4 of those rounds I was considering quitting, and at 2 points I nearly did (and when the server died last month, I really did ). Now, why did I stay for so long? Friends + my alliance. The gameplay is ok for a free game, but not for a paid game. And it never changed. The only significant change really was going from tech branches to races, and that was 95% cosmetic, the gameplay was still identical. And there's no complexity to it. There are only 2 things seperating top players from bottem ones - the amount of time they can spend in front of a screen, and the number of friends they have that can also do a whole lot of that. It's just not enough.

My friends almost all left rounds ago. My alliance has moved onto fresher fields. Only a major, major, change to PA can bring back my interest now, and I suspect that is true of many. That is why I suspect Round 9 will be a failure...I just hope Round 10 is all they promise, for their own sake if anything.


Edit: Where did my sig go

[Eol]

Originally posted by randal
not free, like no free fully playable accounts?
whats the predictions, 700 players? i'd bet it would be around that..
horray..

I'd expect around 2.5k-3.5k to play tbh. Still a rather small game.

[DarkCroW]

Jonas idea sounds very good to me, nice purpose to mix up hardcore players and newbies who just want to test the game. For sure it will get some ppl in the game if they can play for free and then pay for upgrading their acc just before the limit.

So Paying for the game is quite ok. The only thing in my opinion made people stop playing PA after the free roids is the high price. There are many pupil/student who have to thing of things costing them 12 €...

So, can´t u bring up Round 9 with 3 - 5 € / acc?

[Woof]

Originally posted by Coffee
www.planetarion.com points nowhere (a placeholder of even to home.pa would be fine and take 2 minutes!).

When planetarion.com disappeaed off the face of the net, i had to use a search engine to find the forums again

[-o|DarkJedi|o-]

Kloopy,

There seems to be alot of confidence that you'll attract new players to keep the p2p model without free rounds.

Can you give us an indication of the amount of players needed to keep the business running, and what methods you'll use to attract them?

:xmas:

[Jonas]

If a student cannot pay the price of planetarion, they shouldd not pay their interent either...All internet connections cost something, and I cannot see why they can pay that, but not a game they spend most of the time they pay for on...

Im on dialup, had to get a better deal tho, as it got really expensive after a while...I have no problems paying that 100nkr to play, although I know it would be worth one fourth of the amount of money I use on beeer EVERY week(end). That isnt much...its actually nothing...I personally sent the money to PA one round, and it worked perfectly...

Also...Time=Money

Well, the time you spend on free games are just as much as you would for PA...Wouldnt suppose your time is worth THAT much but its certainly worth alot more than the price youll have to pay for the game...so the game price is just a very little addon for you to buy out cheaters...

There were never 180k players...maybe 130k...(still much) but im sure that there were ATLEAST 30k farms...

anyway, me and my m8s are playing r9, and looking forward to r10...What the creatos should consider, would have to be free speedgames and such

Breakfast...cya ;D

[Coffee]

Originally posted by Jonas
If a student cannot pay the price of planetarion, they shouldd not pay their interent either.

The cost isnt the problem. The question is 'is it worth the money?'. To you maybe, but to virtually everyone else its a 'no'.

Originally posted by Coffee
The cost isnt the problem. The question is 'is it worth the money?'. To you maybe, but to virtually everyone else its a 'no'.

There'll be around 2K players playing. A fraction of the players PA used to have but hardly 'virtually everyone'.

[Coffee]

Originally posted by ÐiSCoRPoRaTioN
There'll be around 2K players playing. A fraction of the players PA used to have but hardly 'virtually everyone'.

180k = starting figure
2k = ending figure

Thats just over 1% of the original playerbase.

Originally posted by Coffee
180k = starting figure
2k = ending figure

Thats just over 1% of the original playerbase.

Begin with P2P PA.
You'll see the % rise a bit..

[Cochese]

Originally posted by ÐiSCoRPoRaTioN
Begin with P2P PA.
You'll see the % rise a bit..

How's that?

We went from 16k to 7k between rounds 6/7 alone.

Originally posted by Cochese
How's that?

We went from 16k to 7k between rounds 6/7 alone.

10% still isn't 'virtually everyone'

There will be a playerbase for round 9 regardless. To those people it is worth paying for even if it is a pale shadow of what PA's palyer-base used to be.

[Cochese]

I don't doubt that...I, and alot of people I know, will still be here.

Problem is, 2k people won't be enough to support the game, unless we're paying $20 a piece.

I like the small universe in the sense that, it's all alliance folks...it's all "us", the die-hard PA junkies. You nick roids off someone, and you feel like you earned them (sometimes)

I also like large universes, where it seems like anything can happen...and people can play in their own "universe" without more than one or two clashes with the major alliances...with enough people, you don't need two universes (pro/newbie) because there is literally enough space for everyone.

Originally posted by Cochese
I don't doubt that...I, and alot of people I know, will still be here.

Problem is, 2k people won't be enough to support the game, unless we're paying $20 a piece.

I like the small universe in the sense that, it's all alliance folks...it's all "us", the die-hard PA junkies. You nick roids off someone, and you feel like you earned them (sometimes)

I also like large universes, where it seems like anything can happen...and people can play in their own "universe" without more than one or two clashes with the major alliances...with enough people, you don't need two universes (pro/newbie) because there is literally enough space for everyone.

Rnd9 is just something to keep us busy, a way to placate the remains of the community until round 10 is done. At least, thats what I think. Supporting the universe is irrelevant, since Jolt/Sim-Tech are the financial people now.

In any case, I'll be gorging myself with slabs of meat, now.

Happy Christmas, Cochese

[Cochese]

Same to you!

[zenopus]

Originally posted by Coffee
Imo, Planetarion simply isnt value for money. People generally dont like paying for things they dont think are value for money.
...
After all ~180,000 people can't really all be wrong?

There were never 180k players, only 180k planets.
The real number of individuals playing the game is more likely to be somewhere near 40k.
Of those about 40% somehow managed to get payment sorted for the first p2p round.
The remaining 60% (-ish) were unwilling or unable to get payment sorted and I would not expect any significant number of them to ever join p2p PA. One would be inclined to hope most of the multis fall in this group. PA certainly is not value for money if you have to pay for all your multi accounts.

[r72dk]

Just to close your discussion above as its pointless..

p2p kills the game, period. Those who dont see it id suggest, take a walk, deep breath, come with a clear mind and think unbiased and anew on PA situation.

facts
*first roudn of p2p - players db decreases from 180k planets to about 50k
*second round and followings -- half each time the previous number
I guess this is just enough to keep those who say "why p2p is a problem etc..." if they dont believe in that, at least accept the fact
*as someone put above, the game has no interest in itself, basicaly its divided on those who play 24/7 and those who dont and it determines EVERYTHING.
*new players DONT PAY to try somethg new. Remember how many times that situation happened to each and everyone of us ?
*PA to be minimally intersting MUST have about 50k players or even more, making it very intersting at about 100k. Why? because thats when casual players can hope for anythg in IRC, because atm u dont do anythg unless you know someone with influence.

etc....

IF even after this you dont realise why p2p just wont work, then i dont know wat else is needed.

AND if they´re undergoing to p2p system, i wish for my own good and others wasting time and trying to do somethg useful, for that to be announced so i can dedicate more time to univ, which greatly i need, and others to rl.

Im looking forward for the end of week with most expectancy, after that i guess ill just fade away to somethg else.

r72dk

[zenopus]

Originally posted by r72dk
Just to close your discussion above as its pointless..

p2p kills the game, period. Those who dont see it id suggest, take a walk, deep breath, come with a clear mind and think unbiased and anew on PA situation.

Err, hello! If it is not p2p, the cost of the big fat pipe will kill the game.

IF even after this you dont realise why p2p just wont work, then i dont know wat else is needed.

Well, lucky someone does.
What is desperatly needed is viable suggestions for how to pay for the bandwidth usage - and a little bit on top probably would not harm either.

Feel free to make suggestions for how to make PA profitable (or at least not loss-making) without it being p2p.

[r72dk]

zenopus,

if they dont have the means to support the game freely, they´re very bad businessmans.

abuot those suggestions, maybe a lottery would be the best way to go
otherwise there were already written zoudns of reasonable suggestions this last days, its just a matter of reading a bit

[Gayle29uk]

Originally posted by r72dk
p2p kills the game, period. Those who dont see it id suggest, take a walk, deep breath, come with a clear mind and think unbiased and anew on PA situation.

And without p2p there never will be a game at all. Kinda makes the whole argument irrelevant. Yes I know all the arguments about ads/popups etc but they really do bring in peanuts. Yes yes, SS etc run free but they are not and never will be professional quality. I can see the argument that PA isn't really at that standard at the moment but I have no doubt it will be by R10. That's the difference, a free game will NEVER support full time developers/customer service people so it has to be p2p and no matter how hard people might wish otherwise those are the absolute, irrefutable facts of life.

[r72dk]

Gayle. let me put it this way....

PA was about to die, and the only way to save it was goign free, everyone knew that and thats why FS had to close it, as it was predicted and announced. Lack of money leaded to no free game which leaded to no players, etc...

So, another company decides to buy it, and what are they supposed to do ?

To do this "And without p2p there never will be a game at all..." at least id like to hear an explaination of the reasoning behind the wonderfull decision :smiley1:

old age new age

free --> death of PA \ FS ends --> jolt buys / free ---> might keep
p2p --> death of PA / ............................... \ p2p ---> death of PA


explain another possible scenario

r72dk


PS, ofc if the plan is giving r10 for free, which is a reasonable possibility, im boud to ask, if they dont have enough money to go through this rd, how do they expect to go free for the next round ? with assumigly more players, thus more costs

p2p did kill pa but thats only cz of the price. if it was cheeper say about £1-£2 then more people would play cz its cheeper. as there are more ppl playing the income from players is the same but there are more players making it more enjoyable resulting in more people joining up.

and ltes cut the creators sum slack. it aint easy runnign a game that everybody likes. i think theve done a good job (ok thats a half tru) but still theve kept it going. and if r10 is as good as they say then i can c things getting a lot better. if r10 sux then i think it will b bye bye PA.

[Coffee]

Originally posted by Gayle28uk
Yes yes, SS etc run free but they are not and never will be professional quality.

Planetarion isnt and never has been of professional quality either.

[Gayle29uk]

Originally posted by Coffee
Planetarion isnt and never has been of professional quality either.

And if you include the rest of the quote from my post...

I can see the argument that PA isn't really at that standard at the moment but I have no doubt it will be by R10

I'm looking forwards not backwards. The creators showed without any doubt they couldn't run a company and no-one will dispute that. Now they don't have to and can concentrate purely on development/support of PA.

[Uprising]

I very much doubt much people will pay for PA after R8.

And for SS, it hasnt been down afaik since it started and the gameplay is quite the same.

[Kileman]

Round 9 will be pathetically small and be more detrimental to the pa players that are still hanging around than not. The only way to save this is to make R9 dirt cheap or free.
________
GL1200SEI

[Gayle29uk]

Originally posted by Uprising
I very much doubt much people will pay for PA after R8.

They will, R9 will have a small universe but I think there will be about 2k of us. Everyone is gonna have to really change their tactics and WORK for their roids I can see a round where individual planets don't count for much but the overall alliance is far more important seeing as how individual one-on-one attacks will be defended 9 times out of 10. There will be a hell of a lot of xan (even nerfed) so people can play silly buggers with fakes. As an alliance player I don't see that really as a problem

And for SS, it hasnt been down afaik since it started and the gameplay is quite the same.

Not been down? ROFLMAO! I was in Aesir in R2 and it was so unstable it drove me up the wall! I dare say it's improved now but no matter what happens with it, it's not and never will be PA.

[Uprising]

With down I ment this round though, soz should have been more clear.

[lokken]

It's not a matter of not being able to afford planetarion. That's not true, considering a respectable amount of people played round 5 and round 6. However, since then, PA has been in decline, because the people playing were mainly the "core", and most of them got tired of playing pa over time.

Planetarion's only long term hope would be to try and draw back the kind of numbers we saw in round 4, with a new larger playerbase. It's impossible to expect players to come back to Planetarion after a long period of time, mainly because of the amount of time you have to commit to be successful in the game -people just burn out, and you need a new core to replace them with.

A succesful round of Planetarion requires at least 30000 planets, preferably 50000 and above. If there were these kinds of numbers playing round upon round, people would bother. Otherwise it just isn't as entertaining, and there isn't as staggering a challenge as there was previously. Numbers are key; it's one of the main attractions of planetarion. Where else could you have played with 179999 other players at once?

In my view the only prospect for Planetarion is all or nothing - get a larger number of players back, or perish. Planetarion is a better game to SS in terms quality, ease to play, and competitiveness. I think most people would chose PA over SS if offered a choice of free accounts. However if offered SS free and PA pay, it's obvious what people are going to choose at the current time. PA needs to do everything to get players back, for the long term.

As a sidenote - most people have got the amount of money to play for a pa account in their pockets. It's just that most of them aren't old enough to have a credit card, and have problems paying.

[Gayle29uk]

Originally posted by lokken
In my view the only prospect for Planetarion is all or nothing - get a larger number of players back, or perish. Planetarion is a better game to SS in terms quality, ease to play, and competitiveness. I think most people would chose PA over SS if offered a choice of free accounts. However if offered SS free and PA pay, it's obvious what people are going to choose at the current time. PA needs to do everything to get players back, for the long term.

PA needs to patent some of it's ideas then start serving 'Cease and Desist' notices. Without substantial re-development and creative input most of the clones would disappear overnight or pay a license fee for the IP they stole.

[Eol]

Originally posted by lokken
snippety snip

Completely agree. Fact is, Planetarion is going to need a whole lot more than just features to get the numbers back, and the number have got to come back. They wouldn't have if this was a part-time project, but it isn't - there are 5 employees here. On one hand you're going to need income, but on the other hand you're going to need to get new players, and face it. You're not going to pay unless you really like it - that's the nature of the browser-based game market. For each sell you are going to have to seriously impress.

I can't help feeling that the Creators here are planning for a grand relaunch for round 10, without quite being able to get there, because there aren't going to be enough players playing from the start. Say you have 2k paying players at the start, and x number of free accounts. How many free accounts are you going to be able to actually GET after 2 p2p-only round? 50k? 30k? 10k? How many of these will end up paying, given also the fact that they are unlikely to have a chance at getting very far in their first round?

It takes a round or two to get enough people not only playing, but getting them involved in the community enough to actually get some 'schwung' over the universe. It takes some time to see new alliances appear. It takes some time ... and all of this given that r9 is p2p will be *after* The Grand Relaunch, r10. How grand will it be then?

I am extremely curious to know how the creators do intend to revitalize the game, given that Jolt/Sim Tech are no doubt also fairly interested in earning money here, and may make decisions thinking 'Armani' instead of 'jeans', if you catch my drift. But it has to be emphasised - you have got to make people play before they'll pay...

[Eol]

Originally posted by Gayle28uk
PA needs to patent some of it's ideas then start serving 'Cease and Desist' notices. Without substantial re-development and creative input most of the clones would disappear overnight or pay a license fee for the IP they stole.

I doubt there's much patentable in PA. And it certainly isn't anymore.

[Coffee]

Originally posted by Gayle28uk
PA needs to patent some of it's ideas then start serving 'Cease and Desist' notices. Without substantial re-development and creative input most of the clones would disappear overnight or pay a license fee for the IP they stole.

Yes, start suing those thieving b@stards who run utopia and those games, and you might as well sue homeworld for blatantly stealing pa's tech tree! Something needs to be done about this! Make those people like SS pay for making a profit on Planetarion's hard work and investment!

[tyriel]

i'd be interesting to hear how much is paid to the makers of the very first first-person shooter for each new quake, half-life or similar clone.

i think that particular intellectual property is a bit nebulous to own. and i think PA might be owing some money to other sources.

you cant patent "a text based game played on a browser" and i think thats the part they did first...


has anyone considered what jolt is capable of here ? we've all said whats wrong with PA.. no one has said that Jolt is just right for > .. ? .. <. That translated into the pa scenario or that ideology expanded might give you some idea of what they think they can bring to PA. OR more importantly.. what PA can bring to them.

as an initial point or two, i'd say finances, bandwidth, server capacity, gaming communities, clan leagues, portal management are the jolt aspects.

for PA its a set of developed game mechanics, marketable trade name, an experienced current playerbase, a large number of previous players, an experienced development team, an online community.

any of those give you a hint on where jolt is going with this ?

[Spearhead]

i dont have much to add to this discussion as almost everything has been said but... if PA is P2P i wont play not that i dont like the idea of paying, not at all its just that the gameplay is screwed with only 2-3k players and i aint going to wake up every night at 05.00 AM to see at ETA 1 i have to recall, not worth it sorry

Greetings

Acid

[-=Zyth=-]

I dont know if its been mentioned or not, but will there be the free (3-5m limit) planets in r9? hmm I suppose it would be too much to ask that those freebies can create gals, this may limit the crapness that new players taking these accounts faced with multi's and inactive gal mates. It cant be a matter of bandwidth, 2k players arent going to use that much are they? (Am i right thinking isps have to pay for using Jolts network when we are on their sites?)

[lokken]

Originally posted by Gayle28uk
PA needs to patent some of it's ideas then start serving 'Cease and Desist' notices. Without substantial re-development and creative input most of the clones would disappear overnight or pay a license fee for the IP they stole.

The idea is almost impossible to patent, plus the fact that games like SS were coded from scratch.

Planetarion is hardly original.

[Evil Smurf]

Pay to pay wasn't the direct cause - but it led to it...

P2P reduced the player base, which left more of a core, and destroyed the game for those who played more casually... i gave a round or two spending ALL my time on PA, and doing fairly good...but now, it's just not worth it anymore... With ob attacks and such, you have to spend absurd amounts of time, that a casual player doesnt have...

a larger player base allows for more targets, and such, and gives you more freedom to have a life...