Ways to attract new players?
 

I've been away from PA for quite some time, was a bit surprised though that theres has been no (success full anyways) ways of increasing the player base... gone slowly downwards now for what? last 15 rounds...

Noticing the new race got me curious enough to sign up again not having played last 5-6 rounds... Might help towards ex-players, not so much on new ones...

What does Jolt need to try and fuss this game up a bit more? Never have there been more people playing online games, ever... so surely there must be ways of attracting some new faces, the game itself has proved its quality and playability for years now... Yes many things about PA sucks, but hey, people still play it for some reason, so something obviously is addictive about it :p

My tiny little suggestion would be to try and make it easier for new players, and part-time players to be able to experience something positive playing PA, not just getting fubar'd by elite nerds playing their 20th straight round (no offense) ;p

How about splitting the ticks themselves into two groups...
Like, the hourly tick gives you your resources as usual, but you are unable to launch an attack unless on a designated 'Launch Tick', like every 2 ticks...

Not sure if this is just stupid or actually viable, just strikes me as making it "easier" for the less active, you only -have- to check your planet every 2-3 hours instead of every single hour to feel safe etc...
Gives only 12 launch ticks a day rather than 24... so should not really make it too bad for the active players either?

And ofcourse, could this "in making it easier regarding activity level" help attract new players?

Re: Ways to attract new players?
 

Hi Villeh, I think I shared a galaxy with you in Round 13 (my IRC nick is Predator). You were in Angels at the time and told me you were going to get me in then promptly dissapeared off the face of the earth you little bugger :mad:

Not that I like to hold a grudge or anything ;)

Anyway, regarding your idea, I'm not sure if it will achieve what you expect it to. The main problem people have is being attacked in the middle of the night and when they wake up the ETA is too low for them to try to get defence. One way to get around this is to not allow attacks between for example 2am and 6am UK time. Problem then is that it will be bad for people in different time zones as the middle of the night for them will not be the middle of the night for the Brits / Europeans.
Maybe instead we could have a "sleep mode" whereby you can make it impossible to launch attacks at you. Kind of like vacation mode but you still gather resources. This sleep mode could last say 5 hours but you can only activate it every 24 hours. That way you can give yourself a night off every now and then and know you won't get incoming. Then again this could get annoying fast for people who are trying to organise large scale attacks (ie pretty much what alliances do every night).


Personally I think the most obvious way to attract new players is to make clusters more relevant. We need some kind of framework in place where cluster alliances actually have some use thereby giving new players a place to meet a large number of different people from different alliances. Reducing the defence ETA to -2 has been a step in the right direction. However reducing the attack ETA to -1 I think might have disastrous consequences. We'll just have to wait and see I guess.

Re: Ways to attract new players?
 

Well i think the internet gaming world has moved on. I have been loving coming back to PA, and reckon the game is much better than it used to be.

But a text based real time strategy game just doesnt excite people anymore.

Re: Ways to attract new players?
 

What about giving 1 free credit (or simply an upgraded planet) to the 1st registration of a player?

Re: Ways to attract new players?
 

that's easily abusable

Re: Ways to attract new players?
 

old players could get some bonuses when they get new players to register? Maybe 5 roids or maybe some resources?

Could be cool.

Re: Ways to attract new players?
 

Hiya Villeh, long time no see mate :D

There's still a place called IRC!

Re: Ways to attract new players?
 

Make the game, portal and forums single sign on, with identical skins and clearer links/options. i.e when I went to pay I had to look through a couple different places. Newbie's guide should be simpler, like "hardly use the internet simple", and the portal and game page should both have short descriptions of what the game is and why people should play it.

More attractive colours, the current schemes are very "early internet", which is cool for people that are into the whole cyberpunk/hacker/elite look, which I am, but not to the WEB2.0 people of today.

Overall, change the packaging, it should be marketable as a product.

The game itself is simpler and much easier to learn and get to grips with.

Then spam thousands of e-mail addresses gathered from mmorpg forums. Or maybe I'm kidding on that point.

Re: Ways to attract new players?
 

Advertise more I would say :)

Re: Ways to attract new players?
 

Yes, first and foremost advertising. How are you going to attract new players if you don't? Just hope someone randomly types "planetarion" into google and end up here? Word of mouth? Well, word of mouth admittedly do have merit, but this is really quite a closed community and such word will rarely go outside it to people who haven't already played planetarion in one way or another. Unless of course the admins expect us to go tell all our real-life friends how much we enjoy a text-based game that really has been close to death for years now. I've occasionally recruited friends to play, but they've always quit in short time, they have simply not been interested in paying to play it when there are so many free alternatives out there, and this game has so few players.

No, new colours, a new portal, new shipstats - these are all minor adjustments that really have nothing to do with gathering new players.

I remember some years ago when I first started playing these games on a "serious" level, I signed up for pia after seeing some spam on a mmorpg site. Previous to that round, Tesla and Theam had went nuts spamming about the game on various such pages, and forums - and you know what? It helped. That round (of a clonegame) had more than 7 000 signed up planets, and a lot of those who joined still hang around on netgamers today.

The only way to get more players is to make more people aware of the game, and right now I don't see that being done.

Re: Ways to attract new players?
 

Hey Bro :)

Yeah, been great being away :p

What chans might I run into you in?

Re: Ways to attract new players?
 

#illuminati and #7even, will add you shortly to illu :p

Re: Ways to attract new players?
 

One thing I would say is get the Portal off the www.planetarion.com domain! Its rubbish and I cant see it enticing people who might chance upon the game.

Im not saying dont have a portal but move it off the front page. Lets have a nice spash page with minimal links to other interesting pages. You need to capture the imagination of new people and make the want to find out more.

Re: Ways to attract new players?
 

I know theres a desire in this community to pretty much put the whole blame for PA's downfall on Jolt so the advertising aspect is an easy thing to pick on. However advertising isn't some kind of magic bullet thats going to be pa savior.

Advertising might see a boost in numbers to start with but initially attracting people doesn't help anyone. These people need to be kept hold of for the round and for rounds to come and the problem is the community often seems to refuse to really put the work in now to keep players already. New players often don't get given a real chance by alot of galaxies and alliances and they often get bashed, abused and spoken down to and end up getting driven away from the game.

I can't help but think that due to this any money and time Jolt and PATeam would put in advertising would be wasted as this community would drive most of them away. Everyone of us needs to really start putting real effort into providing a friendly and inviting enviorment both ingame, on the forums and on irc to show Jolt that this isn't a lost cause, the community is one that wants to expand, wants a game that brings new players into the community and is worth investing in. As it is we give them a ready made excuse for not investing money and time into advertising. If they still ignore advertising once the community is providing a much more inviting and fun community for people to join then its time to put the blame solely at Jolts door but until then its hard to blame Jolt for not wanting to invest money on something the players show little care for outside their own personal success

Re: Ways to attract new players?
 

I agree with the points raised especially with regards to IRC and the forums.

I personally detest IRC mainly due to my experience of IRC through playing Planetarion and because of that I would like to see planetarions reliance on IRC as a game aid reduced or removed. The game doesnt need it anyway to be honest, it has an in game messaging system that can be used for the game just fine.

As for the forums I feel that GD is unhelpful and m,any of its contributors very negative towards the game so why is this behaviour allowed to continue? Also, other areas of the forums contain some good stuff which could be used as content for the Portal. Maybe the forums should be moved in game accessible only after logging into a game account.

Re: Ways to attract new players?
 

Seriously, are you kidding me CrashTester? GD has nothing to do with PA, that's the entire point of it being a General Discussions forum.

Re: Ways to attract new players?
 

He does have a point in a way mind you, while its no where near as bad as it was GD can be very closed off forum and highly intimidating yet its also a forum thats one of the most likely to get a new players first post (Suggestions they cant really post on as they are new and haven't built up the knowledge yet to know whats good and bad about the game, AD is off limits normally also as again they are new and either don't have an alliance or have just joined one so aren't able to post yet ect ect)

It may not have anything to do with PA as such, many of the regulars may not play PA but its on the PA forums and as such plays a part in building the community

On CrashTester idea about moving the forums in game, that imho would be a bad idea though. While some of the none players can be some of the people who do the most for weakening the game playing community from a forums pov theres also alot of people who don't play the game but are an asset to the game playing community

Re: Ways to attract new players?
 

Its a general discussion board not a slag off and despise planetarion board. I know full well that GD'ers like to distance themselves from the game but lets face it, its Planetarion and the paying players that are keeping the board running. And lets face it most GD'ers are ex-planetarion players who are disgruntled for one reason or another, so who needs them hanging around the game they hate?

Re: Ways to attract new players?
 

How about Jolt making a Planetarion strategy game on disk for PC, complete with graphics, sound effects, races, etc and will have the option of playing the game online.

Re: Ways to attract new players?
 

It's up to Jolt to make something of the game/community. We're paying for a product, it shouldn't be the responsibility of the community to prove to Jolt that the game deserves investment!

Just compare the days of when Fifth Season owned Planetarion compared to Jolt. Spinner and team put in a lot of effort to improve the game as much as possible, something which I don't feel that Jolt particularly cares about. The game is merely hosted by Jolt and run by volunteers in spare time - and it shows.

Re: Ways to attract new players?
 

Its like comparing chalk and cheese. Fifth Seasons or more to the point Spinner, Fudge, Vish and Zeus ran the game not their baby first and a game and business second. They would and did do everything they could to make the game successful at the expense of the company and their lives.

Jolt is however a business, they are there to make money and not there just to throw money away. If the game seem like it could move forward and as such makes business sense to invest money then I'm sure they would, but if we dont put in an effort to make a community enviorment that people would want to join and stay in then whats the business sense in them investing money.

Ist a 2 way street, money thrown at the game wont save it but neither can the community. Its needs both parties to make an effort and if Jolt aren't going to risk money then its upto us to take the first step and start showing we have the kind of community spirit left in us that made the game great

Re: Ways to attract new players?
 

It's not just about money, but more about taking an interest in the game. Jolt puts in the minimum effort required to keep the thing running, which is the same as quite a few of their other services.

It's unfair to expect customers to try and improve things without some effort from Jolt (and I mean Jolt and not PA Team).

Re: Ways to attract new players?
 

How is it unfair to expect players to show some desire to actually make the community better, more inviting and hence larger rather than what we currently do as a whole and cannibalise ourselves. We can all sit here and say "Until Jolt does something why should we" but thats just petty and if we are going to do that we should be ashamed of ourselves.

Theres an old saying of "People in glass house shouldn't throw stones" and that's the situation we are in. We are at fault as much as any group in PA yet we lob stones left right and centre at other groups, We have an area of this game that only ourselves can make better and its upto us to cultivate that are even if we feel other areas are letting us down.

Additionally I will state that Jolt has put effort in, they maybe aren't vocal about it to the community but they were initially interested in making PA a success. They put faith and money into spinner to create a version of PA that fitted in better with the market which he did, they offered free rounds and they took an interest. And yes of late it seems to have waned a fair bit but if we can prove that we care and we want to create a community that if time and money was invested into getting more new players, would welcome them and make them feel at home they would be fools not to reinvest time and money into the game as the community was always the selling point of the game and getting that spirit back would give a strong marketable product

Re: Ways to attract new players?
 

Advertising is what brought me to the game in the first place, but the point is to have a good product to advertise about.
PA has become more geekish these days due to some people taking the game very serious and making it harder to compete(not that thats a bad thing).
More advertising maybe, but the question is where and how in my opinion.

Re: Ways to attract new players?
 

I kind of agree with furball.

GD has nothing to do with the game & carries a warning that it's content is going to follow that principle. There should be a place for people to discuss subjects outside the world of Planetarion. It's a bit stupid to say "you don't play the game so you can't post anything about it" or "you play the game but can only talk about the subjects we want you to".

Nearly every set of forums specifically made for something (usually a game ) have they own "off topic" or "general" forum for people to discuss whatever they want. GD is just a little less tame than others, but thats just because it has evolved with the regular folk that have used it since it came about.

There was however a thread about Planetarion which seemed to do ok.

People should initially be pushed towards PD in my opinion. If they see a community actively discussing the game then surely that is going to bring them in. Not a forum where the whole point of it is to give somewere for people to post about everything that isn't the game. They should also be nudged towards *reading* AD & AR but not posting on them until, as Wakey said, they are more involved.