[Paisley]

I decided to wait the PA team speech on friday to see where they are going before responding back. One point I would like to take from friday is this...


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<CH_Bot> (Q 7): <Cain> what are the short and long term plans for advertising pa?
<Lunar_Lamp> In the short term, I've already had a brief test of Facebook promotions to see how that works, and I think that might ahve potential (the amount invested was small).
<Lunar_Lamp> I also am currently working out a budget and the details of how to advertise for the next round.
<Lunar_Lamp> Amusingly, one of the things that is a small issue there is our lack of high quality images: banner ads and similar tend to need images!
<Lunar_Lamp> But, yes, it's in my budget, and the more the game grows, the more we can afford to spend on advertising!
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Originally Posted by Cain

how about actually ADVERTISING?

Originally Posted by Bashar

Both Jagex and Jolt didn't want to advertise a game that was sub-standard. I agree that the game will need advertising, but the game itself needs fixing first. There is no point putting your resources into advertising something that needs a lot of work.

Originally Posted by Mzyxptlk

There's no point advertising a broken game. Improving the game and avertising is must go hand in hand.

First point I would like to make is what is the purpose of advertising.

To aim to get NEW players into playing PA. afterall you are advertising to new customers/players/game_as_it_is_new_meat_to_grind.
One you get new players in you want to keep them afterall you need them to play multiple rounds and buying credits to make a return on cost of advertising.

What experience will the new player get when playing PA?
Kicked out of top gals and into lower farms er I mean galaxies with little or no interaction with other gal mates... get farmed off their roids, with little options for alliances. harder to get roids due to roiding options compared to mid to top tier planets, cost of initing roids... etc.

Ofcourse most of the new players are going to lose interest.

I would like to PA team to look at the above point very closely.

Originally Posted by Bashar

Good question, the attitude change I mention would take time to settle and isn't a quick fix. The changes I would personally make would be starting off with the gal setup and exile. This post explains my thinking on the gal setup side of things (much the same as others have said). In addition, I would make exiling more difficult to stop it being so widely abused. Probably through an exponential cost increase after the first few so that people really consider whether or not they should exile themselves/their gal mate rather than a speculative "let's try and get someone better" or an attempt to make a pseudo-private galaxy.

I do think that there is the issue of attitude.

the idea of galaxy management in PA is to get a Fenced Buddy Pack with all the major allies... (if they do raid the gal get the gal mate from respective ally to warn gal of raid, ground fleets etc.) kick out any folk who arent of a decent calibre...
compulsary mobile numbers and sms in Message from the Commanders.
I even know of some Buddy packs/top gals using VNC programs like logmein to remote access players computers etc so defence can be sent at peak (1-6am game time) for better gal/ally coverage without waking up most of the gal and it totally negates the Multihunters ability to take action for multiple account access. then it turns into a game of keeping up with Jones for top gal.
fenced so they don't get Inc, free to farm low to mid tier planets and no real intergal rivilary... I.E. An incentive to hit top gals.

Every few exceptions to this ... one example was r42 where Me, ManiacMagic, leska, shibby, and clouds (the BP) won top gal with 2 noobs in it (as far as im aware of no longer play PA) and several good to mid-tier players rather than an all elite BP/gal so to speak.

I think MZ said it best...

Originally Posted by Mzyxptlk

Every galaxy that's active enough to educate and introduce new players to the PA community is active enough to exile those very same players. The more ruthless we are with our exiles, the more likely we are to get lucky. It's a contest in sociopathy, basically.

I know of some alliances like Vikings (before anyone asks no I am not at vikings) who have upto 5 apprentices as i would call them all t100 and would like to see this trend continue.

I would like the community take initiatives like this but the truth is that the game isn't Noob friendly as evident by the current exiling culture.

I know historically the PA team have put in measures to try and stop abuse... my all time favourite was making stealers die after r18. (had fun in r18 making my planet / battlegroup strategy was to fleetcatch uncovered alliance incoming and profit in value from the fleetcatches, in hindsight those fleetcatches would have ruin many a players round)

as for the galaxy situation I remember one of the xmas rounds where there was private and public gals and got a decent balance on them (Im having troubles remembering the ratios numbers) and it was fairly competitive from a galaxy perspective.

this may be a solution to the current gal set up.

Lets face facts that there are bawbags who play PA and lack the community spirit. There is no point in trying and force them to adopt a newbie.... just aint gonna happen. my suggestion is

*Private Gals of 8-10
*public gals of 12-20 (tweaking of exiling system required)

something similar to the xmas round.
let the bawbags have their private galaxies with the stagger of planets. have incentives for folk running public galaxies with closures in the loopholes of exile abuse.