Planetarion Forums

Greygan · 24 Dec 2003, 23:38

I just wanted to say:

I do not play PA for one reason--No longer free, yeah I might sound greedy, and ask for a free PA style game, and I hope someone creates one, one of these days. i mean come on 15 bucks a credit?? I play Utopia, (it's a website from swirve hows that???), which is totally free, ok you have to deal with pop ups, but thats why they have pop up blockers, and quite frankly Utopia blows PA out of the water from what I last remember. I am just disgruntled how for the longest time PA was free, and now you have to pay for it. Shame on those that are the actual greedy ones. In which if you look at it, the banners and advertisements are still here. Maybe not as many, but still here. No fault of the creator, but get us addicted to a great game, which Im not saying the game is NOT fun, just saying that the addiction level is high, and then make us pay for it, I think that was a wrong move, I mean Im sure Im not the only one. But I have an opinion, and quite frankly it may be overlooked, and NOBODY may never even reply, but damn it, I said something about it. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr freakin greedy ass company's.

Leshy · 24 Dec 2003, 23:54

If it wasn't for pay to play, Planetarion wouldn't even be here today.

wakey · 24 Dec 2003, 23:57

Ask yourself why you have to pay....Not worked it out yet? I'll tell you why because the click rate of banners for PA was a measly 2% of the players. Yes you heard me right just 2%. And it was like that for 4 whole rounds.

As I've pointed out on other threads in r4, which was the last free round (why has it taken you 6 rounds to complain) there was 180k players and 2% of that just 3k. When a banner ad at the time was only paying $0.03 per click these 3k clicks were not generating much money, certainly not enough to support the game of that size and allow the creators to support themselves and their families

Greygan · 25 Dec 2003, 00:18

No I think you've missed the point completely, PA was free for a long time, then with the change in servers to accomodate more players, THEN they decided to have a pay to play, and Im sure they lost tons of players. My point is, it was free for a very long time. I remember seasons after seasons of battling the AA and such. Anyways, pay to play was their decision, Im not saying they did a complete bad thing, they did what they had to do for them to be able to "continue" with the game. Which, ok whatever, Im just saying, it sucks NOW for pay to play PA. for example, Counter strike, one of the best online multiplayer games ever. Ok first off, you pay a "one time fee" this gives you access to endless graphics, etc... Now, with this in mind, Steam, and the creators of CS do not charge you a monthly or reacurring charge to play this awesome game. See my point? PA i believe doesn't have interactive graphics AT ALL, it's I believe to still be a text based rpg. Am I not correct? Have the divulged massive 3D graphics into the game? Do you get to watch your fleet travel through space approaching your target? I doubt it. So a pay to play game is kinda BS tactic to only get money to pay for servers which probably have an alternative motive.

Another Game that does not charge you to pay, Diablo. Just a "one time fee" for the game, but no reacurring charge to play countless of hours etc.. on this magnificent game. Blizzard has the right stuff set up. Again, graphics based game, with a rpg feel, and individual characters that do certain things etc...Im sure that everybody is familiar with the game. get my point? the quality of games and the amount that people are being charged for them just seem fishy to me and the background of "Why?"

Oh wait another game, well actually I could go on forever of free to play games. How come they don't charge a monthly service rate to play?

Greygan · 25 Dec 2003, 00:28

And the only reason why it "took me 6 seasons" to complain is, thinking that they may have changed it back, obviously Im wrong, and again Im just expressing my opinion, and the percentage of people that actually clicked on the banners, thats not the job of the creators to "FORCE" people to click, their job was to make those banners available on the site for the players to look at and utilize at their own descretion, and maybe Im just smoking crack and blah blah blah blah blah in which that will be the majority of the responses I'll get. But again, alot of people will mistake me and twist everything around that Im attacking the PA game and it's creators blah blah blah. People, get a fricken clue, Im just merely stating an opinion. Ive said my peace and I'll keep responding, but no need to get hostile, I lol do have that right to express my opinion. And nothing that "I" say will change the way the creators of PA will conduct their business. ...:::SIGH::: silly wabbits.....

Leshy · 25 Dec 2003, 01:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greygan

No I think you've missed the point completely, PA was free for a long time

..until the Internet banner-clicking market collapsed, and one of the bigger banner ad companies went bankrupt owing Fifth Season (then the owners) a lot of money, plunging the company into financial trouble, forcing them to move to a P2P model. It wasn't as much a choice as it was a necessity.

Quote:

Ok first off, you pay a "one time fee" this gives you access to endless graphics, etc... Now, with this in mind, Steam, and the creators of CS do not charge you a monthly or reacurring charge to play this awesome game. See my point?

You could pay for about 3 or 4 rounds of Planetarion for the price you'd buy such a game for. Considering the fact Fifth Season was not generating any income aside from Planetarion, and that many MMORPG's require a monthly fee in order to play, the notion of having to pay for Planetarion rounds isn't all that strange.

Quote:

So a pay to play game is kinda BS tactic to only get money to pay for servers which probably have an alternative motive.

Pay to play was forced in order to be able to host the game and have the Fifth Season employees able to take care of the game as a day-job. They certainly didn't grow rich of it.

Quote:

Blizzard has the right stuff set up.

Blizzard generates a lot of income, and can afford to have such a model. Their upcoming Worlds of Warcraft MMORPG which requires a much more intensive maintenance than games such as Diablo, will also require purchase and an added monthly fee.

Quote:

Oh wait another game, well actually I could go on forever of free to play games. How come they don't charge a monthly service rate to play?

In most cases because they don't pull the amount of bandwidth Planetarion does (and certainly not what PA has done during rounds 3 and 4), and because they don't have fulltime employees running the game.

Qdeathstar · 25 Dec 2003, 01:17

another debate about rather PA should be (should have been) p2p or free. This debate is already over.

I know it needs to be free again for a short itm, but now forever like you guys want, its better than utopia... byt far...

This is a round 3 or 4 or 5 thread...

mist · 25 Dec 2003, 01:35

the team is looking at all finance models. you're not the only one who wants 180K planets etc etc.

however, this has been suggested umpteen times before.

if you have something new to suggest then we're all for it, therealmig is in charge of this kinda thing so i'm sure he'd love to hear from you.

-mist

Greygan · 25 Dec 2003, 01:55

Again I was merely stating the fact that I just thought it sucked. That's all, nothing more nothing less. And as far as Diablo becoming p2p, highly highly highly highly, wait, highly doubt it. Why? the customer base is MORE then PA could ever dream about. true they bring in way more money than PA does, however the indifference doesn't matter, for the size of game such as Diablo vs PA, the consistences should still remain.

(btw if Im reading this correctly: Game Credits are credits to be used in the main game, the one lasting just under 3 months.
Speed Credits are cheaper, and are for the fast weekend games we offer now and then.
1 Game Credit $ 15--so that is 15 US dollars for under 3 months, for the sake of arguement, 3 months. Now with this information Which is actually 60 bucks a year. If Im reading this correctly, 3 months, 4 quarters in a year of 3 months per quarter, that is 15 x 4=60.00)

What I mean by this is: For example if diablo (working with fake figures) have lets say 3k players, they all paid their fee to buy the base game. 20 bucks a pop that's 60k. With all their overhead etc...ok done. now with this in mind, yeah they have other games out WC3, SC, etc...That they also generate money off of. True. But that's the size of that particular company. Now with PA lets say they have 1k players. and with 15 bucks a quarter that's 60k bucks a year. So what Im saying is 60k vs 60k with the size of the 2 different companies. And lets say they acquire 1k players a year. ok so 20 bucks times 1k players per year, 20k per year. And PA even if they don't acquire any more players they still generate 60k per year. with a ton of less players. And bandwidth? ROFL do not try to speak of which you do not understand ROFL. Because of the information that transpires over their servers would make PA servers look like a kiddie ride. Again all of this is in my opinion. And as far as Utopia vs PA, it's all a matter of opinion I guess, but mine, I played PA basically when Utopia servers were changing over for the next era. PA would for me would be in the middle which would give me something to do. Yep that's right Im at work, and nothing to do. So I checked PA out again, and still p2p. Im not trying to convince anyone in this whole god forsaken world and try to change their mind about changing PA to a non pay situation. I would never try to do that, but what I am trying to say, and again, alot of people misconstrue this point is, IT SUCKS. It's not hard to grasp lol But just think about it for a minute, if PA raises their prices, will you continue to pay? Probably, and if they again, raise their prices? Will you still pay? If Utopia became p2p, guess what, My opinion would be: This sucks, and quit playing. But I would let them know full fledge, that it sucks. Just like swirve.com email. They forced people to pay for their email services, and I quit using it, why? They tried to make people pay, now Im sure some people went ahead and paid for the email service. And yippee freakin skippee for them, but I just don't think it's necessary. You pay for your internet, you pay for this, you pay for that, you pay for something else. But when something starts out free, and goes to a pay service without some sort of logical explanation or even some sort of alternative, I just think that blows. Ok Im rambling on with this pointless convo with myself, and quite frankly I honestly don't know why Im even saying it, I guess just the boredom of sitting here, and not doing anything makes peoples mind to wonder...

Btw not sure if Se7en is still playing but wassup if your out there, and the rest of the crew!!

Greygan · 25 Dec 2003, 02:15

ROFL Ok one last post, I wanted to apologize for the previous posts on this day, Here in the US it's still the 24th, so it may come off like Im some sort of jerk. Ummm No more from me, Im done, Peace be with all, and Merry Christmas, and God Bless.

Leshy · 25 Dec 2003, 02:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greygan

And as far as Diablo becoming p2p

That's not what I said. I said Blizzard's upcoming game Worlds of Warcraft will be p2p, which it indeed will.

Quote:

What I mean by this is: For example if diablo (working with fake figures) have lets say 3k players

Working with fake numbers isn't very helpful when you are dealing with a comparison of exactly those numbers. Diablo II alone sold 1 million copies in the first two weeks. If games in the USA do go for $20 a piece (they go for 45 euro around here), that's already 20 million dollars of income.

Quote:

Now with PA lets say they have 1k players. and with 15 bucks a quarter that's 60k bucks a year.

That's sixty thousand dollars a year, out of which server hosting, bandwidth and several employees needed to be paid. And that isn't much. With about 4 employees, you'd want to be getting in the order of 200,000 dollars a year minimum.

Quote:

Because of the information that transpires over their servers would make PA servers look like a kiddie ride.

Of course. But then I was talking about the bandwidth of other free online games in the same category as Planetarion (LH, SS, Utopia, etc), not about battle.net. Incidentally, that is also why Blizzard has battle.net hosted by large companies, such as AT&T and Telia. And let's not forget Diablo II (being only one of Blizzard's projects) raking in 20 million in the first two weeks alone, which goes a long way in paying bills.

Quote:

If Utopia became p2p, guess what, My opinion would be: This sucks, and quit playing.

So what you are really saying is that you're a freeloader who doesn't like to pay for services being provided. If I were you, I'd start getting used to it, because as soon as you are going to leave your front door, nothing comes for free.

Free PA would mean PA having ended after R4. Pay to play PA means PA has just finished round 10. Enough of an explanation for you?

xtothez · 25 Dec 2003, 02:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greygan

And as far as Diablo becoming p2p, highly highly highly highly, wait, highly doubt it.

Diablo is already p2p. It's covered by everyone who shells out £20-30 for a game CD (plus expansion packs, sequels...).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greygan

And bandwidth? ROFL do not try to speak of which you do not understand ROFL. Because of the information that transpires over their servers would make PA servers look like a kiddie ride.

Actually you're wrong again. Battle.net is surprisingly low bandwidth, as it only really has to process login data then send lists of games to connected users. I'd be surprised if it took more than a few Kb of data to get into a game. Planetarion on the other hand has to support several gigabytes worth of pages and images a day (I believe Spinner mentioned something like 7GB/day when PA was being sold, with under 6k players).
If you would also factor in the ideas that:
a) Everyone who pays for PA plays online, whereas only a fraction of people who buy Diablo bother with multiplayer
b) In the same vein, an average online Diablo player may play for 2 hours a day. PA players would be more likely to spend upwards of 4 hours, each page click grabbing several dozen KB of data.

Leshy · 25 Dec 2003, 02:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by xtothez

I'd be surprised if it took more than a few Kb of data to get into a game.

To be fair, I do reckon battle.net chat features and game movement synch make up for a fair portion of bandwidth. Although I'd be curious to see indeed how much of a load battle.net is under, in normal circumstances

xtothez · 25 Dec 2003, 02:48

I used to play StarCraft quite well on a 28.8k modem. The amount of data isn't an issue, latency is.

Greygan · 25 Dec 2003, 03:29

Freeloader, perhaps. But why not, if someone is going to have something for free, why not take advantage of it? I stirred up enough commotion with this topic, you have ALL missed the whole entire point. So again blah I'll drop it.

Secondly Diablo, which Ive already mentioned has a 1 time fee to play. I'll pay a 1 time fee to play a game. But we are talking about a reacurring charge here. And true the amount that blizzard has sold isn't a true comparison. But of course you can use fake numbers to deal off of, whether it be true numbers or small numbers, it's still a comparison on an equal base. That's like saying, a toy car model which you can purchase, and build yourself, like a 1:20 scale compared to the real car, that someone actually owns. What your saying to me in my opinion is, this toy model car would and or could not be the replica because of it's size. If we scale something down it's still what it is. I mean even tho it's smaller, it still resembles the actual physical state of the real "thing".

The question at hand is not really why they went p2p. Now that I think about it, there is no real question at all. We can sit back and defend something all we want. Again Im not trying to tell the creators of PA to go back to being free. If this works for them, and it keeps the game alive, and pays the bills, etc.. and if everyone is ok with paying, ok, fine, so be it. Im sorry to have bothered the PA world with my thoughts. There is nothing else that needs to be said, Ive heard your side, I agree with everything that has been said about PA, it's a p2p, period. Not arguing that fact.

PA, yes is a great game. WIth my personal situation I don't have alot of money to shell out for a game. But that doesn't really matter to you guys, and it shouldn't. My own personal problems prevents me from paying or continuing with a game if they choose to charge for it. It's just aggravating at times, when you had tons of friends, and now that things have changed, they are all gone, and it's to come with the territory, you know who your real friends are. That's not the issue. It's just the personal issues of ones own self that involve whether or not you do certain things in life, or you don't do those things in life. Which again, has no bearing for anyone else, or has no matter for anyone else either. I guess what Im finally trying to say is, because Im a poor bastard I don't get to enjoy the things that were once free. And you young bastards with parents that you leech off of that actually get to enjoy the greater things in life, (this is suppose to be humorous, and most of you jumped on it like a freakin tiger in heat) I know you all don't know me, no biggie, Im not a serious type of guy, just wish i was back in the PA realm kickin your lame ass's :P ....Oh wait, Im the lamer here :P hehehehehehe

Chill guys, I just know how to get you all started

Have fun this next era and get loads of them 'roids...

Raging.Retard · 25 Dec 2003, 14:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greygan

...yeah I might sound greedy...,
...Shame on those that are the actual greedy ones....
...Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr freakin greedy ass company's....

Those have to be the funniest 3 sentaces in your post.

You want a free service provided for you, and then you have the arrogance (or perhaps ineptitude?) to call PA greedy. People have to run the game, equipment has to be paid for, bandwidth has to be covered, but no, its them that are greedy for not wanting to go into debt for it... Heh..

Ramihyn · 25 Dec 2003, 15:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greygan

That's like saying, a toy car model which you can purchase, and build yourself, like a 1:20 scale compared to the real car, that someone actually owns. What your saying to me in my opinion is, this toy model car would and or could not be the replica because of it's size. If we scale something down it's still what it is. I mean even tho it's smaller, it still resembles the actual physical state of the real "thing".

Bahahaha :P

I guess you never tried shrinking or enlarging something

Independantly if its a physical, organical or pure logical/virtual thing like software, scaling up and down only works within rather small parameters till you have to switch to different techniques.

So no - your homebrew database which is able to handle all your 15 m8s adresses, isn't just a smaller version of the governments Information Awareness database ...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greygan

The question at hand is not really why they went p2p. Now that I think about it, there is no real question at all. We can sit back and defend something all we want. Again Im not trying to tell the creators of PA to go back to being free. If this works for them, and it keeps the game alive, and pays the bills, etc.. and if everyone is ok with paying, ok, fine, so be it. Im sorry to have bothered the PA world with my thoughts. . . . . .

Where in your post where thoughts?

So - instead of whining and complaining - whats the free thing you did for mankind to enjoy? Or was that limited to these great "thought" postings?

Dworak · 25 Dec 2003, 15:12

Bit are the gheyest.

Aryn · 25 Dec 2003, 16:53

guess we shouldn't mention to him that pa isn't even making enough money to pay the people who are keeping it running.

btw. if you posted this thread soley to state your opinion and not have other people debated, it shouldn't have been posted in the first place. this forum is called 'planetarion discussions' and we're here to discuss things. i have 1/2 a mind to close the thread. but it's christmas, and people are debating anyway.

wakey · 25 Dec 2003, 20:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greygan

No I think you've missed the point completely, PA was free for a long time, then with the change in servers to accomodate more players, THEN they decided to have a pay to play, and Im sure they lost tons of players. My point is, it was free for a very long time. I remember seasons after seasons of battling the AA and such. Anyways, pay to play was their decision, Im not saying they did a complete bad thing, they did what they had to do for them to be able to "continue" with the game. Which, ok whatever, Im just saying, it sucks NOW for pay to play PA. for example, Counter strike, one of the best online multiplayer games ever. Ok first off, you pay a "one time fee" this gives you access to endless graphics, etc... Now, with this in mind, Steam, and the creators of CS do not charge you a monthly or reacurring charge to play this awesome game. See my point? PA i believe doesn't have interactive graphics AT ALL, it's I believe to still be a text based rpg. Am I not correct? Have the divulged massive 3D graphics into the game? Do you get to watch your fleet travel through space approaching your target? I doubt it. So a pay to play game is kinda BS tactic to only get money to pay for servers which probably have an alternative motive.

Another Game that does not charge you to pay, Diablo. Just a "one time fee" for the game, but no reacurring charge to play countless of hours etc.. on this magnificent game. Blizzard has the right stuff set up. Again, graphics based game, with a rpg feel, and individual characters that do certain things etc...Im sure that everybody is familiar with the game. get my point? the quality of games and the amount that people are being charged for them just seem fishy to me and the background of "Why?"

Oh wait another game, well actually I could go on forever of free to play games. How come they don't charge a monthly service rate to play?

I havent missed the point at all. From Banner Ads Planetarion was never making a profit, more often than not it wouldnt even cover its monthly outgoings.

And as for games like CS and Diablo they are a completly differnt kettle of fish. Does PA have people paying £30 upfront for the software, does PA have a situation where most of these people paying £30 never cost the company a single penny as they never use the online features, does pa have other companies paying vast amounts to use their game engine. To all these questions the answer is no. Not to mention PA doesnt have big backers footing development costs ect that makers of such games as you mentioned do. Its just not on the same scale and cant be compared .

As Ive already stated here round 4's banners were paying just $0.03 a click and only 3,000 of the 180,000 players bothered clicking them. Thats just 2% of the of the players which is even below the industrys average click through rate of 5%. Now do the maths 3,000 * 0.03 = 90. So thats an income of just $90 a day or if you perfer $7,560 or $30,240 a year. Now I can see why people look at these figures and think "thats not bad" but what needs to remember is the game at that stage took 5 (or did Oreo come on board when it went p2p) full time people to run it and when you consider that you will realise that even if all this $30,240 was pure profit that would mean each member of staff would only take home just over $6,000 certainly not enough to live on. As it was the money made wasnt pure profit, they hard hardware, bandwith, general running costs and debts from previous rounds that had to be paid. Bandwith alone would eat up a fair chunk of it, we already know that when the game was being sold the transfer rate was around 7gb a day and the game had around 15k players if I remember rightly, so we can assume that bandwith figures for 180k would be around the 80gb mark. Now if you or me were to go out to buy a gb of bandwith for a site we would probally end up paying around $1 per gb, now PA probally paid no where near that but if we use this figure thats going to be over $80 a day to supply the bandwith alone which is $6,720 a round or $26,880. Now as ive said PA probally didnt pay anywhere close to the $1 a gb figure but it certainly does give you an idea of the kind of costs involved in running a game of that size and how its not quite as easy as you may think to turn a profit when you dont have finacial backing that the games your talking about have.

And as you have pointed out there are games out there that offer a game Like PA for nothing but the circumstances for most of these are completly differnt. For example many of the PA clones for example have membership bases that are still small enough for the game to be ran as a hobby allowing the admin to have a full time job to pay the bills with. Obviously when this is the case it takes alot of pressure off you as turning a profit isnt as vital, all the game needs to do is cover the costs and you ahvent lost anything. Also many of these clones have been able to see the problems PA have had in the past and have been able to plan for it which can be vital, for example some offer things like enhancements that you can pay for. Now when you hit problems its often like quicksand and the more you struggle to correct the mistake the deeper you can find yourself which is where PA is at now. It needs to change to make money but without the money to right the problems its slipping further, the clones on the other hadn have been able to miss the quickand so are growing.

With things like Utopia its differnt, utopia is a game thats been around longer than PA. Its a game that was around when the net bubble was at its peak and where advertisers were willing to pay stupid amounts per clicka nd investors would throw money at it, PA came about towards the end of the bubble things were already starting to tail off slightly and by the time it really started to take off the bubble had burst. So while Utopia was able to exploit the situation to secure its future and allow it to be pro-active with problems rather that reactive like PA had to be due to monetary contraints.

To put things simply you cant compare any one game with another because no matter how simerlar the games might seem they each have their own set of unique circumstances that effect them.

@Aryn - The Management should have taken my suggestion and shut the forums for the day so us mods could have a day off