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Unread 1 May 2009, 14:00   #1
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The Basic Premises of PA: (the) way to go! (?)

Hello all,

I often come to the conclusion that many of the suggestions concerning alliance size and all would not be that relevant if the basic premise of PA would change. Also, as has been found in an other thread (here: http://pirate.planetarion.com/showpo...9&postcount=67) the game has lost more and more casual players.
The players that are retained are in the "upper tier alliances". Imo that is a problem, as PA desperately needs an influx of new players. I think the largest problem is the basic premise on which winning PA nowadays is built.

What is the main basic premise?
Activity. You can only win if you are more than casual active, i.e. create your life around PA. Really, that is no good base for a mass player game. Especially, if you are not more than averagely active you will be bashed time and time again. Again, no fun here for mass players!

What should it be?
That is my question. I have no particular ideas on it, albeit that it should change. I'm curious what your thoughts are on this subject. What should be the main criterion? What would attract more players? How can we make PA a game again for the mass, and not only for the elite?
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Unread 1 May 2009, 14:10   #2
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Re: The Basic Premises of PA: (the) way to go! (?)

Stop thinking we can change it with minor changes to the current setup. Delete everything we have now, and start a new.
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Unread 1 May 2009, 14:31   #3
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Re: The Basic Premises of PA: (the) way to go! (?)

This is a real time game, i know we should be making it less dependent on activity and more dependent on skill, but if we stray too far from this path we end up with with a game that you can program to play itself for 3 weeks.
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Unread 1 May 2009, 15:00   #4
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Re: The Basic Premises of PA: (the) way to go! (?)

This is something I've thought a lot about over the last few years. I've had a few different ideas, such as different ways to play the game (and rankings associated with that, to give casual--or even idle!--players a chance to 'win' in their own category) and other means of making it less activity-based, and more skill-based.

As Entropy said though, there's a fine line between making it more casual-gamer friendly, and playing Sim-Planet.

Kargool also raises a very valid point. Eventually, it's going to be time to scrap this codebase and start over totally from scratch.
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Unread 1 May 2009, 15:01   #5
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Re: The Basic Premises of PA: (the) way to go! (?)

make it free and the players will come
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Unread 1 May 2009, 15:06   #6
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Re: The Basic Premises of PA: (the) way to go! (?)

If you look at the numbers, free rounds haven't seen any noticeable surge in new planets (or planets in general).

Everyone knows about WoW and EvE, but people just don't know about (or have forgotten) Planetarion.

This is a key point.
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Unread 1 May 2009, 15:07   #7
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Re: The Basic Premises of PA: (the) way to go! (?)

We used to be spammed ingame about voting for PA on the mmorpg site...whatever happened to that?
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Unread 1 May 2009, 15:09   #8
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Re: The Basic Premises of PA: (the) way to go! (?)

Who knows. A good point though, certainly.

Personally, I'd like to see more of that stuff, and even linking interesting/important forum threads on the MOTD to hopefully get people more involved in pertinent discussions.
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Unread 1 May 2009, 15:26   #9
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Re: The Basic Premises of PA: (the) way to go! (?)

@Kargool & Cochese: I might have stated that for me rethinking the basic premises of PA means that as a consequence the game needs to be rebuild along these lines. For me, that is not a small change. However, I think that parts of the current game could be used again in a PA 2.0 (aaargh).

In addition, what I wanted to instigate here is a discussion about formulating a vision of PA which means for me basicly a discussion of the premises of PA.
Also, as I see it activity should of course be a criterion, but not THE criterion to win a game.
Thus, I agree that a total overhaul would be the answer which is based on a few well formulated criteria of which activity is one.

Now, I am curious whether Pete has a vision on how PA should be, where the game should be heading, and what his vantage points of thinking are. tbh clearly taking the course that has been taken the last few years is not the answer.
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Unread 1 May 2009, 15:58   #10
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Re: The Basic Premises of PA: (the) way to go! (?)

Way forward: Intergration of Facebook/twitter/bebo/myspace(or something similar) and whatever else to PA playing, make it alot simply and enable idiots to play the game and still do well by being able to mass recruit there friends, stick a price of a round to 50p-£1 and recruit x100 the players

Or keep going: continue round after round with people who love the game and expect PA to keep going on at the same rate as it has for the last 10 to continue to the next 10.

The reason people play pa is because it's a cool community spirit etc, seems to fun once ya get into it, not because its graphics etc, the game is outdated so either make it VERY BASIC, proposal 1, or just leave it and leave the memberbase as it is, with new alliances forming every so often, few players come, few go etc, proposal 2
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Unread 1 May 2009, 16:01   #11
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Re: The Basic Premises of PA: (the) way to go! (?)

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Way forward: Intergration of Facebook/twitter/bebo/myspace(or something similar) and whatever else to PA playing, make it alot simply and enable idiots to play the game and still do well by being able to mass recruit there friends, stick a price of a round to 50p-£1 and recruit x100 the players
"Pound a Round" theres your slogan right there.
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Unread 1 May 2009, 16:07   #12
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Re: The Basic Premises of PA: (the) way to go! (?)

Activity can hardly be faulted, or a bad thing. What is bad imo is the active players views on the less active.
Ofc Mz found the number of allianceless players has fallen off a cliff.
The game has become less and less about your galaxy more and more about your alliance. I played r3-9 without a real alliance at all, I got roids on raids run by my galaxy or cluster alliance; no-one cared that I was not in a major alliance and I never had trouble getting into reasonable private galaxies because of it. The galaxy mechanism no longer exists for this, and galaxies are now hostile to an allianceless player regardless of his activity.
Some ppl might contest me on that but a former galm8 of mine who hates playing with alliances but gives his all for his galaxy, happily 3 fleet defending or even suicide defending as required, he spends his time getting booted from galaxy to galaxy who automatically think that because he has no alliance or a wish to get one he is intrinsically shit.

That brings us naturally on to the exile system which severely punishes both the inactive and those whose activity is simply mediocre, their relative inactivity means they may not do well; the being booted to the bottom of the galactic pile renders that certain. So where a player might have been not so active but would on average land in a good galaxy and get a decent rank one round in every three or four rounds that hope disappears, why bother playing round after round?

I guess I have just restated what most ppl already are aware of (even if they in their galaxy take no steps against it... yes Im guilty of exiling ppl too... tho rarely ppl who I see on IRC). I dont want Activity to be removed as a criteria for success (because Im active: tho not currently successful ) Any move away from the current success for activity system is likely to be so fundamental it damages the current player base; I want the game to be more fun for those with less time, not less fun for those with plenty.

I was intending to suggest the following at some point anyway so now seems as good a time as any.
Obtainable goals:
- allow a player to challenge another player/small group to reach something first - say 100 roids taken in 1 attack and give the winner a reward of the same sort of scale as the current quests. You could perhaps have a system of players betting a certain amount of res but I think I prefer the purely positive inducement of it simply being a bonus. This triumph could also be marked on the oft talked about PA career should such a thing ever appears. Assuming you know the people you are challenging and they are of similar activity levels then such a challenge can be fun regardless of whether you are on 2 hours or 20 hours in a day. It may have the double positive consequence of improving activity as a means to win the challenge and possibly people inviting other people to play so that they can challenge them.

Aids to the inactive:
I was also thinking of some sort of hibernation system for fleets; for those ppl who cant check that they dont have incs every eight hours or so, or at least not reliably. So a system where a fleet can go on an equivalent to PL and not be harmed in combat without going anywhere (it is in no way obvious to ppl that PL avoids ur fleet dieing so make it obvious). I was assuming the fact the fleet is in hibernation would show on a scan so it dosent harm the actives and is a policy which is not without risk. But it would in the new low salvage age mean the disaster of your fleet's death because u wernt on for 12 hours can be removed - im not convinced that salvage really helped in cushioning the shock of losing the whole fleet anyway.

If we want to make having inactives in the galaxy useful for the actives (thus reducing kicking) then you could go so far as turning the hibernation option into a strategic reserve option; putting your fleet at the disposal of the MoW for ingal defence.

I rather like the latter one, but its likely to be abused chronically for ingal flagshipping, but im not sure I care about that if the end result is a mediocre player who strategically reserves his fleet often is kept in a good gal and has a good gaming experience as a result.

Edit: probably these belong on the suggestions forum - I got a bit carried away there: didnt like pointing out the problem without some thought on solutions.
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Unread 1 May 2009, 16:16   #13
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Re: The Basic Premises of PA: (the) way to go! (?)

Quote:
Originally Posted by [B5]Londo View Post
I was intending to suggest the following at some point anyway so now seems as good a time as any.
Obtainable goals:
- allow a player to challenge another player/small group to reach something first - say 100 roids taken in 1 attack and give the winner a reward of the same sort of scale as the current quests. You could perhaps have a system of players betting a certain amount of res but I think I prefer the purely positive inducement of it simply being a bonus. This triumph could also be marked on the oft talked about PA career should such a thing ever appears. Assuming you know the people you are challenging and they are of similar activity levels then such a challenge can be fun regardless of whether you are on 2 hours or 20 hours in a day. It may have the double positive consequence of improving activity as a means to win the challenge and possibly people inviting other people to play so that they can challenge them.
I can see this being abused, or somehow manipulated to bring back donations to anyone in the universe by deliberately failing tasks. Acould also be treated as a farm and would need to be monitored if they repeatadly fail tasks. So people who are shit and keep failing could possibly be classed as farms.

Quote:
Originally Posted by [B5]Londo View Post
Aids to the inactive:
.
you dont hate them that much do you?
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Unread 1 May 2009, 16:38   #14
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Re: The Basic Premises of PA: (the) way to go! (?)

Quote:
Originally Posted by [DW]Entropy View Post
I can see this being abused, or somehow manipulated to bring back donations to anyone in the universe by deliberately failing tasks. Acould also be treated as a farm and would need to be monitored if they repeatadly fail tasks. So people who are shit and keep failing could possibly be classed as farms.
Alot of things are abused; this does not mean they are intrinsically bad. You could always make the rewards less for a bigger player.

Quote:
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you dont hate them that much do you?
yes.
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Unread 6 May 2009, 16:08   #15
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Re: The Basic Premises of PA: (the) way to go! (?)

Here's a few ideas as I'm sitting at work bored!!!

How about making alliances only between Galaxies? max number of galaxies allied to 4-5? Make exiling people only possible with damn good reasons, not just the old "he aint active enough" rubbish - exile requests to be passed to admins to decide if the request is reasonable. Devise a mentoring scheme so experienced players can mentor less experienced Gal mates. Introduce more technologies, attack formations, defence formations (hehe could be fun). Have diplomacy - declaring war would increase roid caps for example, trade agreements whereby each person can nominate 3 trade routes which would bring in extra resources (outside own galaxy only) depending on the size of their trading partners - which also would allow a player to blockade trade routes until the traders saw him off.

Just a few ideas thrown into the ring off the top of my head. Not easy to do them i know but as we were bandying stuff about hehe

side note - I played early rounds, then missed a load of rounds and came back 2 rounds ago, if these have been tried already or thrown out then excuse me

EDIT: this should have gone on the suggestion forum - I'll copy it over.
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