Planetarion News Update

[Tomkat]

Originally Posted by Zh|l

I work for GAME right now.

The people who work in Game (in Exeter anyway) scare me.
When I buy a game there now I'm always very wary about getting eye contact with them. Once they start talking to you about a game, they really get into it, with actions and all kinds of things. It worries me. I'm sure they're very nice people, it's just they think you're their new best friend because you like a game that they like ;O

[Zh|l]

Originally Posted by Tomkat

The people who work in Game (in Exeter anyway) scare me.
When I buy a game there now I'm always very wary about getting eye contact with them. Once they start talking to you about a game, they really get into it, with actions and all kinds of things. It worries me. I'm sure they're very nice people, it's just they think you're their new best friend because you like a game that they like ;O

I don't do anything like that.

I might lean up against the cash desk and talk, and one time I accidently knee the Till 1 power button shutting down the entire till network. I blamed the button for getting in the way and got a frown from management.

[Legator]

welcome biffy.


if pa wont be free - only cheaper - how you will get new customers ?

i think many will quit now. - those who thought it might grow again

[mjrTorspo]

Actually if it costs only like 5€ and you get 3credits for it i think there will be more players, no matter how bad the game itself will be

No way id pay 15€ or something like that for a round of pa anymore. But since r11 wont probably start before summer got no time for it anyway..

[Zeus]

Originally Posted by mjrTorspo

Actually if it costs only like 5€ and you get 3credits for it i think there will be more players, no matter how bad the game itself will be

No way id pay 15€ or something like that for a round of pa anymore. But since r11 wont probably start before summer got no time for it anyway..

I hope there will be a major increase hunters and their detection tools, otherwise everyone will have 2/3 accounts using this payment model. This tip is from experiance, as when we did the same model before it was one of the worst multi cheating rounds ever.

[Spinner]

Kaos, your magnificent intellect would be better spent discussing things you know facts about, instead of performing poor guesswork as to what any contracts between PaTeam and Jolt may include or not.
Your "asumptions" that PaX is not documented in any way are quite laughable, but the thing is that PaX is written in ModPerl and none of the PaTeam knows it very well. However, due to the long lack of a contract between PaTeam and Jolt, PaTeam hasnt had the source-code or the access to do much about it.

And those who linked me with Round 11, not to worry, I am not here to mess that up too, I have had my chances, spent them, and obvisouly PA needs someone else at the designer-helm. I am here to help, first with speedgames, and we'll take it from there (-:

And do take good care of Biffy, he is a really nice guy, but you will all learn that by yourself anyway

[Lord_Thunderball]

As i'm reading spinners post he soudns happy. That's good Can you enlighten us about some changes you made? Or give us an appox date when those kinda announcements will be made? Also... You playing speedround? I got a spot open for ex-planetarion people

[Rudmer]

I want a speedround

[kaos]

Originally Posted by Spinner

Kaos, your magnificent intellect would be better spent discussing things you know facts about, instead of performing poor guesswork as to what any contracts between PaTeam and Jolt may include or not.

thx
but the fact that they did not want to sign the ndas in the first step makes me assume that there must be something basicly wrong with them, else pateam would not have such bigs problems signing them (and i do know some parts of the ndas, and my guesswork is usually quite good )

Originally Posted by Spinner

Your "asumptions" that PaX is not documented in any way are quite laughable, but the thing is that PaX is written in ModPerl and none of the PaTeam knows it very well. However, due to the long lack of a contract between PaTeam and Jolt, PaTeam hasnt had the source-code or the access to do much about it.

Well, in my company documentations are defined as a document which a developer, who knows the language the stuff is written (and mit does know perl, at least a bit, and the difference between perl and php is not really that big, preventing him to make such small changes [i would assume changing the ticker speed is not a such big task, if it was done properly in the first time, which i assume it is =) ] ) can change simple (and even complex) stuff without needing ones of the original developers (as they may not be available anymore etc, so i _have to_ assume that there was either poor or no documentation at all [and i usually assume the worst case])
And as i am a sw developer i find it rather strange that jolt needs to get you back to change this stuff, so i do my assumptions (and i do this in the time where my mind is not really active, so thats not really a problem )
As far as i know Mit already has access to the code for some time now ...

Originally Posted by Spinner

And those who linked me with Round 11, not to worry, I am not here to mess that up too, I have had my chances, spent them, and obvisouly PA needs someone else at the designer-helm. I am here to help, first with speedgames, and we'll take it from there (-:

And do take good care of Biffy, he is a really nice guy, but you will all learn that by yourself anyway

I am looking indeed forward to r11, and i really hope, it can be brought back on track and evelopes again to the game it was again (-:

[Mit]

Originally Posted by Zeus

I hope there will be a major increase hunters and their detection tools, otherwise everyone will have 2/3 accounts using this payment model. This tip is from experiance, as when we did the same model before it was one of the worst multi cheating rounds ever.

I shall be improving the tools, obviously i'm not going to say what they will and won't do (as it gives people chance to 'evade' them) as for hunters, i'll be looking at getting some ppl in to help, but not yet (got to write the admin tools fully first).

[Mit]

Originally Posted by kaos

As far as i know Mit already has access to the code for some time now ...

i've not seen ANY of the PaX code (due to NDA issues which are now solved)

[kaos]

ok, my mistake

[gzambo]

i bought 2 credits for pax , the 2nd for my brother who could not play due to r/l probs so is it safe to say that i can use it for rd 11 ?

[Qdeathstar]

i doubt it.

You didnt buy credits.. you either bought round 10 credits ,round 10 and 11 credits or round 10 11 and speed rounds ... for different prices..

[biffy]

If you have credits left over from previous games and we have a record of them then you will be able to use them in the SpeedGames

[cbk100]

Originally Posted by Legator

welcome biffy.


if pa wont be free - only cheaper - how you will get new customers ?

i think many will quit now. - those who thought it might grow again

Biffy please reply to Legator cause he has a very valid point here...

At least I think so since the only way I see a chance for PA to grow is to make it free for new players if not for all...

[Miner]

Guys,
WHAT bit of "we can't run this game for free without sustaining heavy financial losses" don't you get?

I mean, round 7-8, fine, you may not understand the english,
but my round 9 I thought you would have had ample enough time to use a dictionary,
and by round 10, I thought you might have asked someone to explain.

Let me give you the thick colourful idiot version, ok?


IT COSTS TOO MUCH TO RUN PLANETARION FOR FREE

Even my dog could understand this by now fs

[Appocomaster]

lol. the only way it was ever going to be even close to free is if they made lots of money off the speed rounds etc. I still want to know if they're gonna let alliances rent out servers for a weekend or something and play speed games against each other. I'm sure some people said that was a better idea than speed rounds themselves.

[biffy]

Rentable Servers - Not really thought about this a great deal but I doubt it is the direction we want to see Planetarion going in as it would inevitably lead to numerous people gaining access to the game code.

Bringin in New people - This is going to be a challenge. We will do our best with advertising the game across Jolt, we happen to have some exciting news on the web-based game front about another game which will expose a significant number of players to our services, and if there is anywhere you think we should be promoting the game I'd welcome your ideas. We also hope that the pricing - £10 for 3 credits - will encourage people to give a credit to a friend and get them into the game in that way.

With regards to r11 there will be a free universe so new players will be able to come into the game that way.

[Appocomaster]

Originally Posted by biffy

Rentable Servers - Not really thought about this a great deal but I doubt it is the direction we want to see Planetarion going in as it would inevitably lead to numerous people gaining access to the game code.

by rentable I meant that the only access to the code would be the ability to change some of the stats through a GUI via remote access to a server for a weekend, NOT full code access as I accept that would never happen.

e.g. they pay, get a randomly generated username and password and a server ID to connect to, say speed1.planetarion.com.
they login to speed1.planetarion.com using username / password and are able to change the statistics (ship stats,cost,ticker speed), start and stop the ticker etc.

they have access between Saturday 00:00 and Sunday 24:00 (so 48 hours) or some other agreed on period. during which people can signup and play (with private gals). obviously they'll tell their alliance/friends and only allow said people to play.

basically it'd be like a speed round with person x as admin instead of the pateam, and they pay a fee, say £30-50, for access to the server over this period of time. Maybe a limit to the number of players able to play.
Obviously some work would have to go into a GUI for the admin, maybe a basic one with a direct link with the ship stats, but I'm sure some people would pay (?) (I thought so as some idea similar to this came up when we were discussing speed rounds)

[Qdeathstar]

yeah.. i know if people cant realize by now it cost to much to run PA free, they really are dumb..

The cost from running the servers themselves it itsn the problem, just what you could run making money inbstead of PA

[Kal]

Originally Posted by biffy

Rentable Servers - Not really thought about this a great deal but I doubt it is the direction we want to see Planetarion going in as it would inevitably lead to numerous people gaining access to the game code.

Bringin in New people - This is going to be a challenge. We will do our best with advertising the game across Jolt, we happen to have some exciting news on the web-based game front about another game which will expose a significant number of players to our services, and if there is anywhere you think we should be promoting the game I'd welcome your ideas. We also hope that the pricing - £10 for 3 credits - will encourage people to give a credit to a friend and get them into the game in that way.

With regards to r11 there will be a free universe so new players will be able to come into the game that way.

i'm not sure a seperate free universe is a good idea. there shoudl be a single universe with free and paid planets in it imo

[Appocomaster]

Originally Posted by KalVirtus

i'm not sure a seperate free universe is a good idea. there shoudl be a single universe with free and paid planets in it imo

I agree, one universe with paid + free planets would work better, with limited free planets - unless (unlike last round) the free universe is properly administrated with actual time limits on accounts, so it doesn't turn into a universe of it's own and get players playing there instead of in the pay universe. There has to be some incentive to upgrade. If you halve the mine outputs, disable all but the first 1 - 2 asteroid researches and the final ship research (in terms of PAX - so next round's equilivant), and similar top branch caps, people can play a version of it in the actual universe for a short time, and be advised by other players if they are new, and then can upgrade and not suffer too heavily from it.

[Kal]

thats what i was thinking

[biffy]

That may well be how it turns out. I've mostly been concentrating on these SpeedGames, the exact form of the p2p part for r11 will only be finalised after a number of further discussions to be had with the appropriate people in the PA Team.

[gzambo]

Originally Posted by biffy

If you have credits left over from previous games and we have a record of them then you will be able to use them in the SpeedGames

but why only in the speed rounds?

i confirmed it with therealmig that i did have a credit left so u do have a record of it
as do i as i still have the original e-mail i got regarding the payment made for 2 rd 10 credits

[biffy]

You will be able to use them in the normal games too, but with no firm eta for those I thought it would be more appropriate to mention the Speedgames.

[Assassin]

sounds gud

[cbk100]

Now we are finaly getting somewhere.... that is for sure very nice to see.

I will also put my vote in for having only 1 universe with both paying ppl and free planets.

I have suggested this like tons of times b4 I will try again: When ppl sign up they should be forced to sign up with their nick too and that nick is what should be showed in a final planet ranking list in the end of the round... That will avoid the worst of the account jumping and I don't really see any disadvantages about it. It will also make it easier for PA HQ to deal with the ppl in some cases.

There should ofc. be some bonuses for the ppl who pays... that COULD be: NO ADDS (ofc. only posible if you use adds in the free universe, Bonus resources, bonus roids, extra structure, extra skins, and maybe the best option: to make it posible for paying players to chose one of the ppl they want to be in gal with...

cbk

[gzambo]

Originally Posted by biffy

We also hope that the pricing - £10 for 3 credits - will encourage people to give a credit to a friend and get them into the game in that way.


You will be able to use them in the normal games too, but with no firm eta for those I thought it would be more appropriate to mention the Speedgames.

with 3 kids and a wife speed games as they are played now dont suit but if as suggessted on the suggestions section they ran an evenin speedrd for a week i might use it for that but cheers for clearing it up for me

if as u say that u get 3 credits for £10 may i suggest that the person buying the credits gets to use 2 of them and the 3rd goes into a group fund towards anyone wishing to try the game in that scenario i would have no prob with purchaseing more credits for future rds as it would enable more ppl to try the game for a full rd which in turn would give a better chance of increasing the player base