Make PA £1 a go

[Foxtrick]

And have no real anti cheat stuff like yonks ago!

Main reason I say it, is to bring back whordes of players and alliances.

The game is addictive and I would happily pay £1 for light hearted fun for a month and know full well that they'd be a hell alot more players(or so I think). Yes there may be not be much chance of winning but then again there never was for most of us with playing less than hardcore~casual.

I dunno, I suppose I'm offering up just a new perspective that if planned right you could take PA again.

If anything look at the millions now playing world of warcraft, they have the room and time to play a game like PA, yet probably dont, dare say mainly because they dont know such a nice little game exists

[Gimmick]

The problem I see with planetarion is that it doesnt really offer new players anything. Its difficult to play casual and have fun, you cant really mess around etc. Its a challenge planetarion will constantly face unfortunately. What pa can do is work on making the game a more attractive option. Something that people can play casually and hardcore. This will probably never happen. Then once they have done this seriously advertise it and run a free round, then see if they numbers come in. If they do then a £1 would be an option, although £5 for 3 months entertainment is quite cheap.

[MrLobster]

I would rather see 15000 people paying £1, than 3000 people paying £5. Its not the long term payment that can put people of (just over a 1.66 a month), its the initial lump sum payment (you can get on other 3D MMORPG games for a £10 a month, EVE anyone).

Also with a bigger player base, it increases the likelyhood that smaller, as well as new players, can enjoy it with out getting bashed as they would in a smaller universe.

[Gimmick]

Originally Posted by MrLobster

But I would rather see 10000 people paying £1, than 2000 people paying £5.

I couldnt agree more, however as soon as jolt got more than say 5k players at the price of a £1 a player im sure the price would go up. My argument was that jolt would still get 2k players atm regardless of wether its £5 or a £1 for an account. As quite simply the playerbase isnt increasing, jolt arent advertising and the game has nothing to offer new players.

[Gate]

Originally Posted by Foxtrick

Main reason I say it, is to bring back whordes of players and alliances.

We have a free round, which is actually cheaper than £1, and that's not brought back the 'hordes of players'.

All this would do, if you remove the anti cheat stuff, is have the same number of players with most of them multiing and I for one would not be attracted by this. The enjoyment I glean from planetarion is the satisfaction of knowing how well I have performed compared to other players. I don't want to know how well my planet has performed in comparison to an unknown number of multi planets... 'I'm 18/20ths better than cypher/lokken/furball/fish*' or something just sucks.



*No, these people don't multi (afaik), I just put people I like.

[Gimmick]

I would actually like to multi, I said in a previous thread I made that the chance to own 2/3 accounts would be fun personally. If the interaction of those accounts were banned I would have no problems with it. But one account to play hardcore with and one account to xp with, would be quite fun imo.

[MrLobster]

Originally Posted by Gate

We have a free round, which is actually cheaper than £1, and that's not brought back the 'hordes of players'.

Your correct about the poor showing of people for the free round, but then there is little in the way of advertisement for it, so jolt does need to find places to attract players.

But... we also need a revamp, which is what PAN was for, but this looks unlikely to be fully realised.

[Gimmick]

Advertisement, change the game, lower the price could potentially lead to more people joining the game.

[Kargool]

advertisement is probably the most important issue right now.

We need to get Planetarion advertised better..

As i've asked Jolt and the PA crew this several times, are you not able to set up an account or a paypal user so people can donate for the PA crew to use on advertisement for our game.

This is such a small step to take that will make Planetarion gain so much..

[Gimmick]

Couldnt agree more tbh kargool not only that but once you get a few more players it has a spiral down effect, more and more will tell friends etc. If only jolt advertised the free round ;/

[wakey]

Originally Posted by Gimmick

The problem I see with planetarion is that it doesnt really offer new players anything. Its difficult to play casual and have fun, you cant really mess around etc. Its a challenge planetarion will constantly face unfortunately. What pa can do is work on making the game a more attractive option. Something that people can play casually and hardcore. This will probably never happen. Then once they have done this seriously advertise it and run a free round, then see if they numbers come in. If they do then a £1 would be an option, although £5 for 3 months entertainment is quite cheap.

So the game offers nothing for casual players then, strange but if you look down this very forum you find threads COMPLAINING about xp whores. xp whoring is in no way a hardcore style of playing as its a style of play that relies alot less on being highly active.

What destroys the causual playing side of the game is the communities attitude towards playing casually. Its often frowned upon with most half decent alliances and galaxies removing such players from their ranks.

[Gimmick]

Originally Posted by wakey

So the game offers nothing for casual players then, strange but if you look down this very forum you find threads COMPLAINING about xp whores. xp whoring is in no way a hardcore style of playing as its a style of play that relies alot less on being highly active.

I was talking about the casual new player. Much like if I went and played WoW now. Im not sure about what im doing but i just mess around. When I played pa all those rounds back at first all I did was build some ships, 12 hrs later come back, attack someone smaller than me, 12 hrs later see I died, build fleet etc etc.

The xp whores are experienced players. They know what they are doing, I would argue not many new players are xp whoring, rather as I said its the older school of experienced players who are playing casually. This isnt the group xp is supposed to help.

Originally Posted by wakey

What destroys the causual playing side of the game is the communities attitude towards playing casually. Its often frowned upon with most half decent alliances and galaxies removing such players from their ranks.

You see can you blame people for taking the game seriously? Yes poor casual player he doesnt have a break in this game. But if theres an option to exile then so be it, exile away. In order for me to have a good round I need a good galaxy and a good alliance. Now im less likely to join a galaxy/alliance with a load of casual players who wont defend and attack. Instead I want both to be as active as possible so I can further my chances of winning, which lets face it is ultimately why we all play.

Of course the irony is my gals casual players are doing a darn site better than those who are playing "hardcore".

Also if someone replies to my mail, I will keep them, I will get them an alliance and I will teach them the game. One guy in my gal springs to mind, who is almost top 100, doing well and enjoying the game. It takes two to tango, if people arent willing to learn and co-op why should I leave them in my galaxy?

[Cannon_Fodder]

Originally Posted by wakey

What destroys the causual playing side of the game is the communities attitude towards playing casually. Its often frowned upon with most half decent alliances and galaxies removing such players from their ranks.

This is because the winners are those with the best score, not score divided by activity, so alliances that want to win/do well get rid of less active players as generally they have less score.

[wakey]

Originally Posted by Kargool

advertisement is probably the most important issue right now.

We need to get Planetarion advertised better..

As i've asked Jolt and the PA crew this several times, are you not able to set up an account or a paypal user so people can donate for the PA crew to use on advertisement for our game.

This is such a small step to take that will make Planetarion gain so much..

People put too much emphasis on advertising, they seem to think its a magic bullit but in reality its a expenensive and ineffective option.

Its one thing when you have an easierly packaged and marketted product but PA isnt that. For example next to me I have a copy of PCGamer magazine. In it theres a full page ad from jolt where they are marketting the Jolt.co.uk website. The ad perfectly packages the product and aims it at EVERY reader of the the magazine as it pitches itself as basically an online version of the magazine they are reading. However even then its unlikly that a large number of readers go onto visit the site.

Now with PA, a simelar ad space would only attract a minority of the readers as its simply something thats a minority intrest product. Not all PCGamer readers like Sci-fi, not all like Stratergy games, not all like games that dont include fancy 3d graphics ect ect. So your paying over the top prices to adversise to a small amount of the readership.

PA's best advertisng method is us the players. Word of mouth has a much higher success rate and is considerably cheaper meaning that the money can be used in more productive areas (For example to buy accounts, if we were to bulk buy some accounts perhaps we could even get a discount and then a couple of resonsable people were put in charge of them which we could then use to hand out to people whom were new or whom legitimatly couldnt pay we could potentially increase the playerbase and give them the in that a free acccount doesnt give them)

[Kargool]

Originally Posted by wakey

People put too much emphasis on advertising, they seem to think its a magic bullit but in reality its a expenensive and ineffective option.

I belive you are in error.

Advertisement works.

The steady decline in the playerbase is a proof on that really. No advertising after r12 afaik have only rapidly sent the memberbase downwards. Granted there are other reasons too, but if you got a product you want to sell, dont expect that your customers are your only advertisement source. Plain and simple buisness management. You need to advertise your product to make it sell.

[Kal]

Originally Posted by Kargool

I belive you are in error.

Advertisement works.

The steady decline in the playerbase is a proof on that really. No advertising after r12 afaik have only rapidly sent the memberbase downwards. Granted there are other reasons too, but if you got a product you want to sell, dont expect that your customers are your only advertisement source. Plain and simple buisness management. You need to advertise your product to make it sell.

it is however unusual to spend large sums advertising a product in a declining market segment towards the end of its life cycle. Generally speaking the only way to gian market share at the end of the product life cycle is to either offer a cheap and cheerful product or to differentiate the product from its competitors. In either case it is only worth marketting to exsiting users of the product i.e. players of browser based, tick based strategy games.

In that PA cannot offer a cheap and sheerful solution the only option is differentiation. This is again difficult without resources, but it is the stategy that has been attempted since round 10. Given that there has been a consistant decline in players (with the odd blip increasing the count in some rounds) it would suggest that the strategy is not paying off. Now this may be becuase PA is not been marketted to its target audience well, BUT given that the other games in the market also have declining player bases the more likely solution is that the market as a whole is declinging rapidly.

This means that for Planetarion as a name and legacy to survive it must witther find a new market by radically reinventing itself (maybe even leaving the browser based games market entirly) or expand the market for this style of game entirly.

While improved marketting may increase the player base in the short term, it would be a mistake to invest money at this stage when it would only be a short term increase before the eventual decline.

This leaves the only solution as expanding the market for browser based, tick based strategy games in general. This is a difficult task and cannot be accomplished by Planetarion alone, for this to be accomplished it would be neccessary for competing games to cooperate on methods to enlarge the overall communities playing the games. This could be done by m,aking the games and the communities more open to non-English lanaguages, but I'm sure there are other ways - one possible way would be to work with the other games to have a unified passport system for all similar games so that potential users can easily try out different games and see what they like etc.

[Kargool]

Originally Posted by Kal

it is however unusual to spend large sums advertising a product in a declining market segment towards the end of its life cycle. Generally speaking the only way to gian market share at the end of the product life cycle is to either offer a cheap and cheerful product or to differentiate the product from its competitors. In either case it is only worth marketting to exsiting users of the product i.e. players of browser based, tick based strategy games.

In that PA cannot offer a cheap and sheerful solution the only option is differentiation. This is again difficult without resources, but it is the stategy that has been attempted since round 10. Given that there has been a consistant decline in players (with the odd blip increasing the count in some rounds) it would suggest that the strategy is not paying off. Now this may be becuase PA is not been marketted to its target audience well, BUT given that the other games in the market also have declining player bases the more likely solution is that the market as a whole is declinging rapidly.

This means that for Planetarion as a name and legacy to survive it must witther find a new market by radically reinventing itself (maybe even leaving the browser based games market entirly) or expand the market for this style of game entirly.

While improved marketting may increase the player base in the short term, it would be a mistake to invest money at this stage when it would only be a short term increase before the eventual decline.

This leaves the only solution as expanding the market for browser based, tick based strategy games in general. This is a difficult task and cannot be accomplished by Planetarion alone, for this to be accomplished it would be neccessary for competing games to cooperate on methods to enlarge the overall communities playing the games. This could be done by m,aking the games and the communities more open to non-English lanaguages, but I'm sure there are other ways - one possible way would be to work with the other games to have a unified passport system for all similar games so that potential users can easily try out different games and see what they like etc.

I agree to the fact that webbrowser based games are slowly in decline. This is something noone can deny or dispute. As I see it now PA should advertise themselves as a "secondary" product, not a main product if you know what I mean, people theese days are busy playing alot of other games etc, and I think Planetarion woud benefit from trying new ways in running the game itself. 1 month rounds is one possibility. Having more graphics is another (arent there anyone who can actually do some graphics for PA), a more extensive battlereport could be fun. Being able to participate in your own battles by setting up some strategic decisions maybe.

I belive in interactivity with the game is an important issue here. The person playing PA should get more "into" the game as in that he gets alot more interaction from the game. creating a more fluid war system could be fun. And having some small pictures of the ships. for example.

Maybe even outfitting your own ships. Create a "database" of parts of spaceships and make people build their ships in their own shapes (but keep the stats the same for all types, just add personal adding). Who wouldnt want to see a Harpy with a green mushroom on or a Fireblade with a bearded Viking. The options are out there, just need someone with time and dedication to put his ass down to it

[Foxtrick]

I'll be honest with you though, especially if I can get your interest Kal, other first web based strat + tick based games are damn ugly compared to this.

This is laid out very well and the coding is alot more, well, well built in my opinion, I know that sounds something the casual person doesnt pick up on but really, just compare other games, but this is alot easier to look at and you can give yourself time to get used to it, plus theres so much actual support pages it makes it pretty easy. I just think a push in the right direction for this game, could revive the genre as a whole. Years ago other games similar to this wasnt a patch on it, and its the same thing now. It just aint as well built and structured and tiered like here.

The game is abit complicated and I refrain from kinda summing up how it is now(structured and what works and wont dont) compared to how it use to be. In the end as you rightly point out it probably is little to do with anything otherthan a decline.

Though if Blizzard was willing to help and advertise PA for one whole round, just think how many people you could wind up with for a round? It'd be a fresh influx of some thousands of people(at least, considering theres millions of WoW players), do it when theres a free round infact, no skin of Blizzards nose when we're just a web based game that people can play with ie when waiting for a party to form, waiting for res sickness to wear off, etc.

Even if people at the worst and extreme situation didnt like PA, thats still just helping the team pinpoint whats wrong.

[Shiprex]

Seems like some are suggesting ways to improve and perhaps this isnt the correct thread to make this suggestion but what about a graphical battle report rather than the current data sheet style that gives only accountant types a cheap thrill.
A 10 sec animated clip of the action is all I suggest.
I know it would take up some of the processing power but if people are paying then why not?

[MrLobster]

Originally Posted by Shiprex

Seems like some are suggesting ways to improve and perhaps this isnt the correct thread to make this suggestion but what about a graphical battle report rather than the current data sheet style that gives only accountant types a cheap thrill.
A 10 sec animated clip of the action is all I suggest.
I know it would take up some of the processing power but if people are paying then why not?

If the pateam were to create a standalone browser just for Planetarion, any animation (3D, Video) can be done client side.
With this the basics of the game doesnt need to change, just the presentation.

[Foxtrick]

Just read most of your post, imagine if it was integrated into MSN Messanger? PA would be consistantly popular

[Kal]

we did look into advertising via things like the NUS for UK students - its was horribly expensive becuase people realise how valuable the student market is theese days

[Shiprex]

Ever considered introducing it to schools?

Younger kids you may think dont have a long attention span but that is not quite the case. if you had some way of accessing your account through your mobile phone and it was cheap to use then i reckon the teen market would balloon the income. And if it had some fancy graphical output then kids would go for it. Shorter games (double/treble tick rate) may also increase the activity since the need to be online 24/7 would be reduced.

There are many kids involved themselves in the schools fantasy football league afterall. May not need to be as active but still it requires some attention on a regular basis. And the cost of that was a lot higher than te £1 or so sugestd here.

[Ramihyn]

Originally Posted by idimmu

Also standalone graphical browsers are all well and good in principle but Planetarion should play to it's strengths. People that like graphics can play Eve and WoW, people at work might not have a machine fast enough to do either and probably couldn't get away with it. Planetaion should be marketed as the strategic, MMO version of Solitaire that millions of people across the planet waste their work day on! Also PA team don't have the manpower (and probably skillset ) to create a browser, so perhaps if they simply created a template that generated XML of each page so someone keen, and hopefully not malicious, could code up a browser for them.. I remember someone did something similar in Round 2/3?!!

Its not that difficult to create a simple portable standalone browser with added functionality. Examples of how to do it including sourcecode are here:
http://pirate.planetarion.com/showthread.php?t=187925
http://www.reconstructor.com/paclient/pairc.jpg

You can easily add 3d functionality using the Ogre engine (http://www.ogre3d.org/). Actually im just doing that for another game.

Advantages:
- you can still play PA through your standard browser if you dont want the added functionality and gfx
- beautiful pictures are eye catchers, they keep people interested enough to give something a try instead of instantly going to the next site
- tiny memory/download footprint, better anti-cheating possibilities, all major platforms covered with one source (Windows, Linux, MacOS X)

An alternative would be to use Java but i dont know if the 3D functionality is really acceptable. I havent seen a single decent Java 3d app/demo yet.

But doing anything like that is illegal due to the PA EULA.

[Kal]

Originally Posted by idimmu

Don't go through the NUS.

Go through the individual student unions for their student newspapers. Target a couple of technical Universities where there are already PA playing students or members of PA team that can represent. I don't know if anyone is at Imperial but that would be ideal.

Blanket targeting via the NUS would be very very dum.

you'd be surprised how hard it is even with individual unis - i tried to contact the president of my student union and he simply ignored it.

Unions of big universities are just as money hungry as the NUS - if pa was simply someone's hobby then yes we could probably get it in something, but the fact it its a commerical product and it is jolt that would have to convince a university to put pa in a newsletter.

Now if a player wanted to try and launch a "pa club" at his/her uni that is something that might work

[Nelo Angelus]

Originally Posted by wakey

PA's best advertisng method is us the players. Word of mouth has a much higher success rate and is considerably cheaper meaning that the money can be used in more productive areas (For example to buy accounts, if we were to bulk buy some accounts perhaps we could even get a discount and then a couple of resonsable people were put in charge of them which we could then use to hand out to people whom were new or whom legitimatly couldnt pay we could potentially increase the playerbase and give them the in that a free acccount doesnt give them)

Agreed.

Word of mouth is by far the best way to attract new players.

I found out about Planetarion a long time ago back when I stilled played Infantry, but it was P2P I believe.

Since then, I decided to join up since I have some spare time here and there after college.

Imo, the PA Team needs to do a few things to improve gameplay.

-Weekly polls.
-More content to offer, such as ranks possibly for veterans of top finishers and completion of rounds.
-User friendly interface, your avg teenager as mentioned, will not have the patience to understand this game.
-Lower price.

Since PA has little to offer in the graphics and eye candy area, it must make up in content and originality to attract new players.