Promote the game...
 

We all miss the good old days with thousands of players...


And I was thinking, what are the ppl of Planetarion doing to get new ppl into the game?


What are YOU doing as a player?
But more important perhaps, what is the CREW doing?

Looking around the internet I do not find that many ad's on PA as I thought I would find.
Is it an idear to think about getting the game some more promotion? Or think about some good stratagy to get more players?


I think im not speaking for myself when I say I want more players in the game ;)

Re: Promote the game...
 

all i got to say is PA RIP i give it 2 years and the game will be dead

Re: Promote the game...
 

And for those of you who remember I'd like to say a big hello to round three again.

Re: Promote the game...
 

Okay, maybe abit naive suggestion, but what if Jolt put up a donationfund the players could donate money to to buy adds? or even to buy new people random credits? I wouldnt mind spitting in £20-50 in such a fund.

Re: Promote the game...
 

wouldn't work as Jolt prefer to milk this cow dry end of the day PA will lose it's playerbase due to jolt reinvesting the funds made by PA into other projects

Re: Promote the game...
 

And now you wonder why people dont play with attitudes like yours. I wonder..

Re: Promote the game...
 

Im not quite sure I agree with you on that one mate, I dont think Jolt earns much from PA.

I did at one time ask Kal how much it would cost to buy an entire round of PA and the costs didnt seem like something a internet firm earns alot from.

Re: Promote the game...
 

i know this is drastic but maybe they can leach some ideas form a game more advanced than PA called Warring factions REMOVED great ideas here i been playing this for 2 months now and i got to behonest it has the depth this game is lacking i know i will get a neg rep a warning or instant ban but i know i am doing the rite thing by sharing this site with u guys and maybe it will open jolt's eyes to wat makes a good game

Re: Promote the game...
 

Would you invest in this game if you were Jolt when you have a game whos community is so closed and uninviting for new players that the majority of new players gained get lost. Its easy to turn around and blame Jolt soley but as I keep saying every group in the game needs to stop looking to blame each other and focus on what we can do to improve things.

There are lots of things this community can do to KEEP the new players coming in and if instead of always turning on Jolt we were more proactive as a whole into making an enviorment more welcoming to the average new player maybe we can change Jolts view of the community and force them into investing more time in it.

Kargool for example says he would be happy to donate to a fund to buy credits for others. Why do we need Jolt to do anything to do this, if people want to do that they can do it themselves just as easierly. Buy some credits and start handing them out. Theres probally people in your galaxy for example whom need upgrading or members of TGV members galaxies so it shouldnt be too hard. Or if we want to take it a step further maybe we can start setting up our own payment centres. If TGV have 5 people willing to donate £50 they could all paypal Kargool the money and Kargool can then buy a bunch of credits with that, maybe if the figures are high enough we could even as a community discuss a deal with Jolt/Pateam for further savings. £50 gets you 15 credits and maybe jolt could throw 5 in free for every £50

Then theres the issue of SK that Forest raised, this has been happening for rounds to the lower galaxies and actually alot of the time from alliances near the top. Now seeing as everyone seemed to pretty much agree that SK shouldnt be being used why arent the alliance leaders doing more to stop it. The members should pretty much respect the leaders and what they say should hold some weight so perhaps we could all push not using them more and if it does happen be more strict about it

Same goes for hitting much lower, alliance leaders and BC's could all probally do more to encourage more fair attacking. If they need to attack lower for ship reasons then make sure they they arent going out to smash them to the ground for no reason

ect ect.

Re: Promote the game...
 

From a Accounting POV it probally doesnt make much, the income cant be bad but from my basic accounting knowledge and from info gleened from the forums the charge for the servers is way above normal. With Jolt techically not owning PA but just being the host and manager of the game and Sim-Tech being the owner they will no doubt have differnt sets of accounts. This means that Jolt have none of the costs or liabilities on their books and hence no problems if it goes tits up but allows them to have PA make a positive contribution to Jolt by having the profit that would be there ploughed into Jolt in the form of Server rentals

Not that you can really be critical of Jolt for this, they are a business in an area thats pretty tough to do well in and it makes perfect sense to do it this way to remove any possability of PA going bust and taking Jolt with it

Re: Promote the game...
 

a reward scheme wud be nice like for every 5 ppl u refer to the game and they sign up u get a free credit now wouldnt that help the game grow? also they got to play 750 ticks 1st

Re: Promote the game...
 

I'm removing the URL as posting such is against the rules

Anyway on the issue of 'stealing' ideas. Its really not that simple. Its one thing to create a game from scratch and have certain ideas in it BUT the minute its gone into development and goes live its not then easy to change. For example if you were to start a brand new game now you would probally seriously consider the pre determined sides that the game at that URL has but doing so in PA simply isnt possible now as the games so much built around the community that the community has built and you blow this apart with such a feature and do potentially major damage to the game.

Also what seems like the most simple change often requires many extreamly deep changes elsewhere that on the face of it you wouldnt consider.

As such simply posting "This game has good ideas and we should steal xm y and z" isnt really constructive. If the ideas good you have to put some thought into it and work out how it applys to this game

Re: Promote the game...
 

Maybe we should do a lotto syndicate as a community and invest any money we make into buying back the game, hurrah.

Out of intrest, didnt Idler make an offer on PA to jolt before?

Re: Promote the game...
 

yes! Thieves and Pirates!

Re: Promote the game...
 

Well, i am happy to announce i will by accident get some new ppl to play.

You see, when i last payed for PA it was not cheap, and now i signed up a newbieplanet free zccount and wanted to research but it said i needed to purchase credits first.

I go to this buy-credits-page, and see 9 credits for 30 euro or so...and since there were even larger amounts of credits to buy, i sort of assumed its a credit per techtree or so....(riiiiight)

So i bought myself 9 credits.

So i wont need 9 i found out now:P Used one this round, to find out in 3 days all free accounts will have it for free (dumdidum)

So i have 8 left, of wich i will use 1 myself.
And ill try to get 7 friends from other games to play this aswell now:)

Re: Promote the game...
 

Why dont everyone simply start using their keyboard and let their friends know about this game.

Jolt wont ever do anything other than their own marketing scheme anyways, so its really up to the playerbase itself to increase it

Re: Promote the game...
 

another thing i encounter is from those i know when i ask them (or demand) to play planetarion most of them refuse just as they know what planetarion means. it tends to be hard to get in my own region to find people to play. though i wonder like 5 years ago when i started i could easy snap others in. maybe somehow we should manage to attract a bit younger or older people somehow though no clue how to do this.

Re: Promote the game...
 

The post p2p to pre PAX era imho did alot of damage to PA's rep, something which its never got close to recovering from.

During this time causual gamers were driven away in their droves, no-one wants to pay for a game where they have to deal with much bigger planets bashing them almost constantly every day and as these people drifted away it seemed to make the game require more hours and made it tougher for the rounds to remain intresting for the top (with the game often stgnating) which seemed to drive alot of the more elite players away and onto games that were more suitable for the average hardcore players where good graphics, large player bases, constant challenges were on offer.

I mean now you mention Planetarion in gaming circles and your get alot of people whom will generally just dismiss it and slag it off (you might get some responces about how it used to be good). I just think that really we need to as a community really start trying to persuade people to give it ago, especially the casual players whom imho are vital for the success as they are the mass market while the hardcore are the minority. If we can push it to these people, offer them a better enviorment in galaxy and really show them that with a bit of thought, clever use prelaunch and the xp system then you can make steady gains and have fun even if your losing roids left right and centre and without having to be logged in for 15 hours + a day

If you can then hook them not only do we have the ability to grow the playerbase at the lower end to a number where its can support the bigger players (as it is it seems to be very much top heavy, rather than having loads of casual players and few elite players, we seem to have loads of elite players and very few small causial palyers) but we also have the possability of drawing some of the hardcore players back

Re: Promote the game...
 

What i did to promote the game:

- Spend many hours on many Planetarion channels trying to help those who join the channels with doubts about anything and explain them about the game

- Joined EFnet using cgirc to spam Planetarion url on some major channels

- Use Planetarion url as quit message in most networks im into

- Use Planetarion url as signature in my mails

- Use Planetarion url as my webpage info on all profiles of all forums im into

- Use the invite friends feature to invite eventually emails i get from people who plays any games

- Started threads to discuss about Planetarion on every RTS Games forums i am into

- Sent mails to google, yahoo, and some major portal talking about Planetarion, its potential as marketing tool, how great is to have one site wich thousands have to check many times a day and suggested them to buy it.

- Promoted meetings on my city trying to make my friends who plays local clones and dont like english-speaking games to get into the game ended up joining the game to understand when we discuss about the game politics

- Spent many hours offering support to anyone who asked me help

- Bitched any old PA player i had contact to include their history on PA Wiki and about anything PA Related, and writing myself based on interviews when they dont want to do themselves so new players get more about how the game become what is today

- Spent many hours thinking about what else i could do to help to promote the game

What i did get from all of this:

- Frustration
- Annoyed with lazy PA players who think besides spent many hours having fun with the game it is not worth of any effort to promote it since they arent playing anymore
- Headaches
- Ignored pms when i try to talk with many HCs to set some type of alliance support for new players
- Stupid kiddy Jesterina banning me for stupid reasons with no warning instead to bother to thanks effort of a player to help on the Wiki project
- Jolt blocking eventual players from paying making them gave up the round and maybe the game
- No Jolt support to any effort made by community
- No "thank you for helping" from anyone who might profit from it
- Disapoitment to see the community bothers only with what the game represents to themselves and no one else
- Auto-messages from google and other big companies about my mails
- Bans from EFnet about me spamming
- Some level of success and good sensations of bringing some old PA players back into the game
- Some level of happyness on making galmates/new players i found ramdomly to reach one more stable level of participation into the game

What i will intend to do to promote the game:

- Evething above and everything who eventually comes into my mind

Re: Promote the game...
 

I would happily pay £20 - £30 for other ppl to play because I always do :/
I wont be playing next round and I am thinking of spending £10 for the people who have problems paying in 1 way or another. So i would pay a lil more if it gets cheaper/free credits.

PA will only Ever grow in small spurts as it just tbh takes up to much of ppls lives to play seriously without getting pissed off that ur fleet/roids/structures have been stolen (which is worst thing in the world losing whole fleet no salavge as same with structures) or completly hammered.

Re: Promote the game...
 

I am more than happy to set up an approved paypal account if people do want to donate towards marketting initiatives, i am also willing to keep an open set of accounts on where the money has been spent and the visitors/signups that advertising is bringing for anyone to view that donates.

If enough people want to do it please let me know [email protected]

Re: Promote the game...
 

Well, Let me say THANKS then.
Its a lot more then i could ever do:)

Re: Promote the game...
 

Re: Promote the game...
 

Oh and yes PA will be dead if the team doesnt search for a easy wat to pay fast.

Re: Promote the game...
 

That was the idea yeah. Until I was notified of an absolute outrageous offer that was also denied by Jolt.

I might not have a fancy business degree,but that price was way over the marketvalue for a post-popular internet game