Wake Up Spinner

[Ultimate Newbie]

I’ll prolly get the boot as a moderator for saying this, but I’ve finally come to the end of my tether.

[rant]

Since the beginning, you have done everything your own way. This was to a large extent fine with free rounds, where your player base was massive and quite fluid – that is people who left were quickly replaced. However since R5 and particularly since R8/9, the player base has been whittled down to virtually nothing. You know this. I Currently see three options. These are:
1) Do whatever it takes to increase the number of players, remembering that this will take a significant amount of Money, Time and particularly EFFORT!.
2) Adapt the game to suit the ‘hardcore’ people who are left and thus provide greater re-playability.
3) A combination of both.

But whatever you elect to do (afaik you said elsewhere that you were going to focus on improving the code – suggesting option two), you must realise that it is imperative for this game’s survival past R10 for you to ask for, listen to and accept various suggestions from the community on all aspects of this game. Please note that I have bolded particular sections for a REASON, as this is the at the core of my disillusionment. To use a term that’s being liberally thrown around the media atm, your actions are completely ‘unilateral’, and thus you are not paying attention to a large number of your customers – who then feel disenchanted and thus leave the game.

My point is that there is a large amount of talent, ingenuity, intelligence and diverse opinions amongst the player base of Planetarion, as this game has people from all over the world. Please, ASK FOR HELP!

Speaking for myself, I am sick and tired of going out of my way to help you run this game, only to be rejected in favour of an inferior status quo, or more frustratingly IGNORED COMPLETELY. I know of a few others around that are in similar positions – having great suggestions that are completely disregarded by anyone in a position to do something about it (which is almost always you, Spinner). For the record, this has gone far beyond my ship stats now, even though they comply entirely with the above criticism. More recently, my and a number of other people’s calls for a hybrid game – aspects of R10 and ‘old’ pa – have gone unheeded. Granted, a number of people like the new game, and a number of people preferred the old game. But I feel that there is wide community support for a hybrid.

Now, it is relatively clear that an advertising campaign will not work, and a complete rebuild has not worked (despite high expectations). Also, Spinner, you have made a statement elsewhere where you hinted that you would be working on improving the current game, as I said earlier you chose path two. The only way that you will keep anything resembling a player base is by making a game for the people who are willing to pay, whose input is the key to any future success.
[Politics]
To use a current day example to demonstrate, in Australia the Labour Party opposition is <5% away from winning government at a Federal (national) level. However their leader, Simon Crean has a poor (16%) approval rating, as opposed to john howard’s 63%. The analogy is that poor leadership (for whatever reason) is hindering the success of the group as a whole.

In no way am I suggesting that you leave, Spinner, however I am strongly encouraging you to adapt.
[/Politics]

In conclusion, the attitudes of unilateralism, indifference, ignorance and “She’ll be right” are no longer appropriate for PA’s continued existence. The only workable solution that is currently available to you is to WORTH WITH your paying customers to provide a game that THEY want – anything less is insufficient.

[/rant]

Thankyou for your time,
Ultimate Newbie.

Edit: To give this post some credibility insofar as providing a possible solution to PA’s player woes, may I suggest the following as an area to explore (I have no idea if it is possible/viable).

It has been suggested many a time that PA is not going to be sold from a box off the shelf. However I think a modification on this idea could be a possible solution.

If you read some gaming magazines, you’ll find that they often do some previews on major upcoming titles. What I suggest is that 5th Season contacts one of these developers and ask them if it would be possible for a joint release of both games in the same box. Before you laugh, hear me out.

Part of the revenue from the sale of both the games will go to 5th season, ensuring some income. I'm not sure how much boxed games cost in the UK, but if £3 from every sale went to 5th season then this should be sufficient (depending on market research etc). Although a round costs £10 (!!) not all of the customers will actually activate their planet, nor will all of them use the same bandwidth etc (though hopefully they will). Most importantly, competition from other games off the shelf means that any price difference must be small otherwise people wont buy it (as Economics students would know: Demand and Supply for an elastic good etc). This amount may increase if 5th Season offers to pay for the packaging or something similar. Think of it like an alliance – The other developer will not tolerate increasing the price for the sake of PA – PA must put something back in. Bludging is bad.

Within PA’s section of the box, I expect that there will be a COMPREHENSIVE printed manual - that HAS NOT been rushed into production – and a card with login details with one round’s credit being already included (there could be more items perhaps, but you’ll have to ASK OTHER PEOPLE if they have any clever ideas). By using data on the card the customer can create their planet etc.

On the issue of which game to merge with, I would suggest one in a similar genre (ie Real Time Strategy), which is likely to do well (thus increasing sales and thus players). However this may not be possible (if its going to do well it wont be needing any help from PA, though try them first anyway).

However it must be kept in mind that if this is to be done then there will need to be the ‘infrastructure’ in place for the possibility of a large number of new players. The manual should help, but other things such as getting introduced onto IRC (which also should be strongly emphasised, explored and a guideline to help people actually get onto IRC and from there where they should be going etc, in the manual. This part is very important imo). Other things such as Newbie Help Forum, as well as in-game help etc should help anyone new to the game. The game doesn’t need to be simplified (thus alienating the current paying players), rather much greater emphasis on encouraging new people to learn should be the focus. Other niggly things such as needing to login twice and receiving two differing emails when signing up etc should also be removed – Streamline as much as possible.

/me wonders how long Spinner will ignore this and/or maintain the inferior status quo for. :\

-UN

[Razorback]

[Scoot951]

An advertising campaign might work. Too bad they didn't try one. (So they had some mag ad, if I'm a fan of the game and I haven't even seen an ad, it's not a campaign)

Although I am one of the people enjoying this round, it is a good post.

[Gerbie]

Spinner clearly chose not to listen to the hardcore player and focus on what he believes the great mass would want.

There's not enough hardcore players to keep this game going. As it's mainly the hardcore players that post here listning to comments on these forums is not the way to go. It may give ideas, but he obciously has to think for himself. Even more so as he is one of few people that actually have access to the formula's, so he's one of few who knows how it all interacts.

Improved communication could be usefull ofc.

It appears to me the focus of the programmers of this game is wrong: who plays this game for the forums (which were working perfectly) or the passport system (I never missed it)? They should focus more on:
- making improvements to the game
- communicating the changes they make 'on the fly' to the players (what and why)
- providing means for players that will help them understand how the complicated tactics in this game should be used best.

[Sokar]

Just to correct one bit, 5th Season is out of this for quite a while now. People owning Planetarion are Sim-Tech and Jolt.

Other than that:

[Hurragutten]

\o/

[hyfe]

The game isn't so bad... I'd say the single major flaw with this round has been the documentation/help tools; and considering they want to attract new players, this is a f*cking disgrace.

And I honestly think the failure to sort out the manual/extras comes more down to incompetence in the organization than any lack of listening on their part.

[Edit: And to be honest, I never saw anything special about your stats UN. They were 'just' another set of stats for people to learn; where was the big deal?]

[JC]

Originally posted by Ultimate Newbie
I’ll prolly get the boot as a moderator for saying this

This whole thing is ****ed up beyond belief if that happens mate :/.

I agree with pretty much everything you've said .

[Jonas]

A very nice post. I dont blame Spinner for trying, but it failed. Im sure he'll see whats right and go back, improving the old game instead of making a new one...

What he did wrong, imo was that he changed too much. (j00 all heard my opinions before etc)
Its like changing the basics of football, giving every player a score of what he does, and give the team an average score, having goals just as a bonus

anyway

[Yan-Je]

Ultimate newbie. Well I've been waiting for someone to post such a thread to wake up spinner into realization of all the mistakes and bad decisions which he has made.

He wanted a new game which would attract more players into the game. Therefore he made a game completely favoured toward noobies and those not willing to spend time on PA. However, he did not realise that newbies will probably not pay 10 pounds (15 US dollars) for a game which they do not know and/or do not understand. The mjaority of the people who are paying would include the hardcore, semi-hardcore and competent players. They will be disappointed if you simply ignore their suggestions and ideas, or took out the /aspects part of the game which had them staying for round after round.

Yes it is true that the game was dying anyway, even if you didnt implement the changes. However, alot the new 'improvements' had been rejected by the majority of existing players. Why was there around 14k players in round 9.5 and only 4k in r10 (2k of which has paid and i believe not many of the other 2k will upgrade their account anyway). The main reason is of course its free during 9.5. Well, to increase the number of players, advertising wont really be beneficial as most people would not pay for a text-based game unless they know the integrety of it. To expand numbers, u need the current players to recommend the game to their friends, fellow students, work collegues and etc. Therefore, you should really create a round (R11) which has cheaper prices, and actually make it cheaper for getting new people in the game. E.g $10 for normal accounts, and $5 if you are able to get 3 or 5 more friends/mates to join the game.

As well as that, you (as in the creators, especially Spinner) should also listen to the public and actually recognise what they want, what they would actually pay for and dedicate some time playing it.

well, those are just my suggestions, i hope u can implement it and hopefully save the dying game.

Thank you for listening/reading (tets if u actually end up reading and not ignoring this thread).

Yan-Je

[Hicks]

Originally posted by hyfe
[Edit: And to be honest, I never saw anything special about your stats UN. They were 'just' another set of stats for people to learn; where was the big deal?]

To be honest I quite liked his stats I guess you have to be more of a stat person to do that, the fifth race especially was a great idea as it broke the pattern of 4 races. Each to his own anyway this wasn't really what the thread was supposed to be about.

I'm sure most players who've played Planetarion long term have bucket loads of ideas saved on their hard drive from ignored forum posts and the like. Posting suggestions always had a bad feel to it as you knew deep down they would be ignored but I think of late it has got the point where most people are actually scared to post ideas and opinions for fear of hAl and his gang running into the thread screaming at people to get lost and stop undermining the game, this happens no matter how constructive the suggestion it's all just taken as bad mouthing Spinner. The best example of this lately is people actually having the gaul to brand Chax a whiner when he pointed out obvious and gaping flaws like the idiocy of not having a shuffle, I mean if anything is wrong with the community it's these people who seem to think that because Spinner puts a little bit of effort in he and his game is beyond criticism or even suggestion, all this does is wastes the natural talent of the community and alienates people who believe it or not have something to contribute.

About the boxed game suggestion this is something Laser Squad Nemesis has done recently in the UK with reasonable success, LSN in my view proves that the low budget (Browser/Email based) game with a P2P model can work with good management. I remember about a year ago talking with Petru about all the work he'd done on ship backgrounds, race history and pictures which Spinner had never used for Planetarion this in my view is where Planetarion's niche lies, marketing the game to the Sci Fi quasi role playing people so perhaps you could include detailed documentation of each race. The only problem with the boxed edition is will consumers pay for a game which has no software ? Perhaps this could be overcome by bundling the box set with a PA browser although I fear this would be beyond the coding skills of Planetarion people. Certainly the game would need to sell far below the price of mainstream games and it's still a nice idea which should be looked into. Also why was PAX not even mentioned on MPODG ? The fact it wasn't is a real testament to how utterly pathetic PA Team are in terms of marketing ability.

Also as I read somewhere in this thread the passport system is a joke and from what I've read is going to kill GD which in my view was a valuable part of the community. This makes me sad.

[JC]

Originally posted by Hicks
Also as I read somewhere in this thread the passport system is a joke and from what I've read is going to kill GD which in my view was a valuable part of the community. This makes me sad.

The Passport wont kill GD as it is free to sign up to and you dont have to play the game to have a possport account. You just need to sign up to the Passport so that you can access the forums. The only real problem is that some people will lose their preferred forum nicks due to other people stealing them, whether this problem is going to be sorted by PAteam or not i do not know atm.

[Castigated]

Loving the post, mate. Just one problem: After several years of PA, and the creators not listening to the playerbase's suggestions, they probably won't change just because someone tell them, no matter how well-spoken, that they should...

[Spinner]

Hehe, "just listen to the community", "do what we want you to do", "you have always done it your own way".
We have always been listening to the community, we have often asked the community for opinions, certain community representatives are very closely involved with the game development like stats etc, and we have had plenty of betas and public betas in the last 3 years.
It is widely popular to say that we in fact do not listen to the community, because in any descision we make, there is a part of the community being ignored. Such is change.

But what you have to realise is that many of the things we have done over the years can not be measrued now, much later.
It isn't service, it isn't lack of a good enough manual, or lack of listening to the community, that has put PA where it is.
Strange enough, there wasnt much critisising about "doing things my way" as long as we were growing and number were pointing upwards. But when we started charging, from that very point, we have been going downhill in number of players.

Being chased by the eternal cash-flow ghost, "my way" used to be "Fifth Seasons Way", often the "affordable path" short term, as we wouldnt survive if we would have been thinking longterm.
We were that close to death all the time.

So, the curve turned, 90 % jumped off the game due to a cost of about 5$ in the first p2p round. "Spinner, you killed PA with p2p", they said, and indeed , we did. The game was improved, every round, but we couldnt stop the players from jumping off every round. Round 9.5 was a good attempt at attracting more players, but alas the number of players taking advantage of this to cheat etc ruined much of the round for many people.
The "ad campaign" was surely not a campaign, and can be regarded as completely wasted as far as I can tell. The new owners of Planetarion had drawn a very different picture of what we could do than what was actually done.

But I dont think placing blame, or trying to look for places to put it, is the right thing to do. Nor is it relevant. When we dropped from 180.000 accounts to about 19.000, the media interest died. And without it, there was nothing anyone could do to stop the fall-off of players.

UN, you are quite right I think, it would cost serious amounts of money to put PA back in the picture, and I see no such investments being made by the new owners. Personally, both me and fudge have worked hard for Jolt, investing 2 thirds of our own salary back into PA to keep it alive. I know, it must have been a clear case of "doing things my own way", and surely something that also should be critisised. Because "the community" has all the answers, and knows the right thing to do.

Do you really think that any developer selling a game on shelf-space would be keen on taking on PA, and actually PAY US to have us on their CD? Wake up and smell the coffee.

You seem to think it boils down to 3 simple choices, as you list them so nietly:
1) As you say, this option requires SIGNIFICANT amounts of Time (which we dont have, losing players all the time), Money (Sure, you have them? my money is all gone, Jolt doesn't have any) and EFFORT (ooh, yes, we certainly havent put any effort into things (: What kind of effort are you wanting here, a couple of more employees perhaps, for free ofc?)
2) A game with some 2.000 paying players is not financially viable to support as it is, not with full time employees
3) A mix between the two. Well, to be honest, we are reaching a point where I can no longer afford to charity work, because my family is ending up bankrupt (-:

Finally:
Your idea about going onto a CD sold in stores is the one constructive point you make, and even though I have little reason to belive it can be done, I am not in a position to make such calls any more. I do not call the top descisions anymore, and I havent done so all year. I can bring it up with the owners, thats as far as I can go.

There is no easy way to get PA back together again, we agree there. But to blame us for not listening, for not have the manual ready on time or with enough details, for putting our resources and efforts in places you do not think they are best used, is actually quite pointless and irellevant.
PA as a game had proven to be unable to maintain its customer base, and with dropping numbers all the time, the convertion form old style PA to the new PaX was a great effort to change things around a lot, as we knew from before that small fixes and improvements gets us nowhere. Many rounds have shown us that much.

I am not sure I belive in a viable economical future for browser-games anymore, there doesnt seem to be many about doing well or even close to it. We hoped being bought by an ISP would give us quite a decent push in the right direction, but so far we have seen little signs of it. The future of PA, if it has one, is being decided upon these days, and I am afraid that is all I can say about it at the present time.

- A Spinner just as worried and unhappy as anyoone here

[Ado]

Originally posted by Spinner


<snip some good points>

Spinner for once this post has made me stop and think, what annoys most people is they enjoy the game but have no ideas of the financial matters behind it, adding to this is that PA is unlike other games in that community involvement would make it work I am sure.

Take for instance your declining numbers, someone above mentioned a price model of a) 10$ a month for a player, 5$ a month for any players they recommend. Has this ever been considered ? if so for what reason was it taken down.

Another thought I have is regarding the overall running of PA, we both know for a long time you and fudge have been pennieless and I REALLY respect that and thank you for the sacrafise, but it seems to me the whole PA hosting and operational setup is flawed. You started this game hosting it yourself and as far as I can see if we get down to basics all you need to survive is

1) Money for you and fudge (good normal wages not some sh*t sacraficial sallery).
2) Servers & hosting
3) Players

#1 is obvious and we all know how much it costs to live
#2 this is where i think your all wrong, i've heard it mention pa traffic is 2 gigs a month, but I have seen dedicated server packages hosted by large US based hosting companies on DECENT servers for $200 a month. Were talking dual P4's 1 gig ram and 500gig a month transfer on a 10meg burstable connection.
#3 they WOULD come back given a hybrid game.... I KNOW this i am a player and yes i would GLADLY pay 10$ for a hybrid r9/r10 game.

I dont blame you in all honesty I blame Jolt but my question is, whats the probability of getting pa owernership back, operating in a non profit sense other than your wages. Even 3k players paying 10$ a month + others they recommend would make you 30k$ for 3 months play and with a little imagination this would be enough surely.

More community involvement is a must from what I can see and this is why others get annoyed at you is that YES you ask for community opinions but they tend to disappear with no mention of accept or rejection someone needs to volenteer to me a community rep.

I KNOW there are people here who would code on a part time basis for free and help you REALLLLy make this a good game, dammit I would be one of them but only if PA was owned by YOU or the community and not for jolt who dont give a sh*t about anything but money.

I would enjoy seeing serious debate on this because many many many people have ideas and would volenteer to bring pa back to the good old days.

[skipper]

Good post Spinner, it really should drop all the whine threads as you've explained how it really goes. Imo UN's points are rather thin as for example in the past few rounds you've actually listened more the players opinions than ever, atleast seems so from the outside . p2p ruined pa as you pointed and imo you need someone like Roman Abramovich to buy the game and pay the Pateams salary and servers. Anyhow good luck with PaX, I truely hope youll keep on fighting against the odds.

retired after r5, not played computer games since.

[zek132]

agreed

[GA-Thrawn]

I only know of one webbased game which has been extremely succesful and has been growing ever since it was created in 1997. I don't know if I'm allowed to give the url of that game, so please correct me if I'm not. www.hattrick.org is a FREE game (soccermanager) and is reaching 200k players. The way they gain money is mainly through Hattrick supporters. People can decide to pay a few euro per month (not per season or whatsoever) and then they are official Hattrick supporter. Your gaming qualities won't improve by that, but you get some extra stuff for fun (press announcement, logo, guestbook, funstats, etcetc).

This way new people sign up (coz it's free) and after playing for a while, they get hooked up and decide to become supporter (coz all topclubs are supporter too and they say it's fun).

I really think after a short time of getting used to this, you reach the same level of paying players soon enough + getting quite some new players (you know how fast it can go when it's free). I don't think Planetarion as a game is any worse than Hattrick. Hattrick is a proof that this way of p2p works! It just looks like a risky step to make (but I think taking a risk wouldn't be that bad right now).

(let me know if you want any more detailed info).

~Thrawn

[zek132]

nice idea... 10k members online when i entered the webby!

[Supernova9]

Originally posted by GA-Thrawn
Snip
~Thrawn

The trouble with PA related to that is that it's easier for people to pick up, get interested in and enjoy a football game compared to PA.

Football games have no alliances, thus none of the associated crap that forms AD, even though alliance wars can be fun (I'm talking r2 style alliance wars, not r5/7/8/9/10)

And it doesn't matter if you lose a match in a football league, you get determined to do better next time. With PA, a loss continues for 3 months or so.

[Jeltje]

Originally posted by Supernova9
The trouble with PA related to that is that it's easier for people to pick up, get interested in and enjoy a football game compared to PA.

Football games have no alliances, thus none of the associated crap that forms AD, even though alliance wars can be fun (I'm talking r2 style alliance wars, not r5/7/8/9/10)

And it doesn't matter if you lose a match in a football league, you get determined to do better next time. With PA, a loss continues for 3 months or so.

wel sorry i play hattrick aswel and its harder to pick up then planetarion is

foodbalgames have allainces for instance tfd plays hattrick as an allaince only in a difrent form then ure used, we play for an iternal cup. Also the game has federations and boards.

[Azaghal]

It sounds harsh but imo the game should've just ended after r7.

The big alliances left (partially because it was already widely announced by PAHQ that the game would end, and not leaving open the possibility of it continuing after all), and alliances were a very important cornerstone. All hope was from then on on gathering new players. But there didn't come many. And you can't really blame them too much, there are enough quality PA alternatives that are free.

PA has had a nice lifetime, but I don't think you can do much to save it. PA itself isn't a bad game. But it's just not possible to make 2 full-time job salaries out of a pa-style-browser-game.

my 2 cents.

[Sonnenbomber]

well, i completly understand spinner in the point he didnt want to listen the pa community again and make changes after their wishes. the prob is, was ever the whole community asked or only the elite players and top allys?
normally the elite guys shout for changes cause they didnt like anything, just remember R4 where the salvage formula was changed for advantage of the topplayers and you can find a lot of examples where this continued.
then spinner tried to ignore all community opinions during planning and coding r10. after the first announcés there was a so called pa senate (with nearly all still playing allys) and we published our opinions about r10 and tried to get in contact with spinner. he ignored us completly.
i dont know if it had changed anything when some of our ideas had been integrated in r10, i dont know if more ppl had paid then.
infact, r10 has only 2100 paid planets till yet and the 2 week trialperiod is nearly over, when we ever see 2500 paid planets we can be happy i think. and i am really frightend for the future of pa atm. cause i cant imagine thats its still rentable with 2500 players. atm i think it will be last pa round for all of us.

but i also want to thank spinner for his work during the last years, i know you really worked hard, and also when you made some mistakes during this time (who doesnt? ), i always had fun in playing pa and i hope it will continue some more rounds and hopefully with a higher playerbase, hope you will find any way to get new ppl in.

[furball]

First I'd like to say that I have a colossal amount of respect for Spinner & fudge for everything they've done with Planetarion. They've plunged their lives into this, sacrificing their own financial well-being, and I don't think that we keep this in mind enough of the time.
I don't intend to blame either of them for most of the problems with the game at the moment - I just feel that I need to say my bit.

However, there are serious problem (IMHO) with Pa(X) and the way it is now.

1) total lack of anything resembling a player-base:
The reason why PA was so popular at first was the huge player base. How did the game obtain this? - a) its simplicity and b) word of mouth.

tbh, the current players are the veterans who have played since r3/4, and they are the only people at the moment who can try to restore the game. However, personally (and I'm sure that this is replicated for a large number of others), I've coerced as many people as I can into giving it a go, all the way back in r5. They liked it, but weren't prepared to pay again for it. I tried to entice them via r9.5, and yes, they signed up again. However, as soon as the spectre of paying loomed overhead, they left. I honestly can't recommend PaX at the moment, simply because I'm not liking it much either (which I've never found with any previous versions of the game).

2) total lack of advertising
I know that this isn't the Creators' fault, but it is an issue. I have an old issue of PC Gamer sitting around that I can scan in at some point, with a review of most MMORGs around in 2000. Planetarion has an excellent review (and although it wasn't why I signed up, it's definatly something that caused others to play).

Adverts have to be noticed by readers and acted upon. Reviews generate far far more interest in a game - I don't know how much one would cost to commission, but it'd be well worth it.

3) The game's (IMHO) lack of playability
I just can't get into PaX, and if there was one, I might have used it in frustration by now. Some features are good (see: covert ops, engineering priorities, scheduled launches) but others are bad (see: disturbance, lack of race differences, not enough ships, bad ship stats). On ship stats, if I may digress, people were able to handle the old r3/4 ones because some ships were clearly better than others. Likewise, in r7, there were clear ship combos to go for with each race. There's nothing like that now.

The fact that there's no precision in the ship stats really gets to me: I really have no idea how an attack will go, even at this early stage in the game. With 1 tick attack/defence, scouts are useless - news scans are vital.

Covert ops are a nifty touch but just aren't quite effective enough for my liking. They got well and truly nerfed in the last beta and aren't really worth using (definatly resource transfers-wise)

Overall, the best PaX would have used the old stats (perhaps with a bit of generalisation, e.g. random rough percentages +/- 5%) but with added priorities, scheduled launches and decent covert ops.

I'm going to keep playing the game for the sake of it, but not as actively as I used to. I used to get a kick out of it, but not any more. A lot of respect goes to Spinner and fudge, but no respect goes to Jolt & SimTech.


furball

imho the united states represents a tremendous untapped source of players. people here (like elsewhere) pay up to $15 A MONTH to play online games. many play more than one. readership to gaming mags here is at an all time high and when new games are relased they fly off the shelves. while i am sure this is the case in most of europe, there are 260 million americans and only 500 have ever heard of this game. i think a last ditch ad in electronic gaming monthy (or similar) prior to rd 11 (assuming there is a rd 11) might bring much better results. never underestimate the number of nerdy americans with VALID credit cards.

[The_Fish]

nice post by Spinner, great honesty. I spoke to Spinner a few times before R10, and he listened to what I had to say, he didnt do what I said, but he considered it, which is what you want.

However, whether you blame him or not, PA is dying, and I cant see it going past R10, which is a shame. I dont think there is anything that can be done to change it

[Ultramar]

Instead of putting PA onto a CD either on its own or with anotehr game why not put an advert of PA onto a CD like there were on the old Command & Conquer CD's, i remember there were 3/4 rolling demo's of the game with pictures and text telling you what the game was about and its release date, after completing C&C the majority of ppl probably looked at the extras on the disk. This could also be done on a CD on a magazine like PC Gamer (UK/US mag) for example, they have recently added an 'online' section to their magazine and always have loads of demo's on the free disk.

Just another suggestion from a player trying to get PA back to what it used to be

PS. Put the ships back to targetting 3 classes etc!!

[Neferti]

ultramor - the problem there is that those trailers were for other games by the same company, were they not? that's how it usually works...

trying to remember what there was... Bladerunner, Lands of Lore III, and other c & c games i think :s oh and Emperor: Battle for Dune

(yes i have all c & c games, those are the trailers i remember seeing...)

i think they were all Westwood or EA games? i dont know if that would work for PA... what games owned by the same company could they go with?

[Cochese]

I'm usually one of the first people to reply to posts like this, but for once, I have had other things to do (working 13 hours today).

All I will say is: Thank You Spinner, Fudge, Vish, Oreo, and Zeus--for the long days/nights, months without pay, putting up with people's bitching (mine especially), and generally giving your heart, soul, and shirts off your backs for Planetarion. This extends to your families as well, who have had to deal with these hardships through no fault of their own.

It was, mostly, an enjoyable going-on-3-years, and an experience that changed my life in ways I can't even describe. However, "all good things..."

I wouldn't trade it for anything.

[W]

lol@everyone being 3 years late.

lol@Spinner still talking about going bankrupt.

sorry all, I'll go back to GD now

:W:

[Howling]

I am sorry to hear that PAX isn't going the way it was hoped.

I am not curently playing this round due to RL issues , limited access to a comp being the main one.

I allways thought the creators were up against it and I didn't envy Spinners job at all.

It must be very hard trying to juggle 2 families, he does have a home life but I feel sorry for his family as he seems to have put so much into this game/job.

Job well done Spinner I say, I started in R3 and only missed this last round.

My main complaint with the PA format was allways that you couldn't take any time off, it was 24/7. Even being able to leave the game for `12 hrs at a time without fear that you were going to come home to a total disaster would have helped me.

Thanks Spinner for the game , also a big thanks to Oreo,Fudge, Zeus and the rest of the PA Team that brought this game into my life.

I will keep in touch with old galmates to see how things work out who knows maybe I will be able to play another round ;-)


Just another Aussie ...

Cheers Enforcer

[Gerbie]

Word of mouth is the way to get new players. Some free publicity might get people's attention, but it will not bring in loads of new players. Payed advertisements are not worth it.

How to get people to spread the word?
I.m.o. a method might be:
Give every alliance with over 30 payed players 1 free (or 1 Pnd costing) account/week (unless they already have over 140 members).
Let them use it to bring in new players (or bring old players back).
It's also possible to limit the free (cheap) upgrades to people who are at that moment full members.

Giving free accounts away normally would lead to multying. By giving it to alliances, they can self regulate themselves. And ofc they would risk losing their free accounts if they give them out as multi-accounts (and get caught).

[Lord_Thunderball]

[quote]Originally posted by Spinner
..
[quote]

Nice speach spinner, hope the community is reading this with shame on there face. I think they finnaly understand you aint try to drown your own baby!

Another thing... Thrawn might got a good hint..(read up).
I hope more people can enjoy your fantastic life work(and life savings in the future![/

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally posted by Spinner
We have always been listening to the community,

Listening? Perhaps. Acting on requests/suggestions/ideas - far, far less often. Granted, you can point to Theamions and Petru's stats in R6/7 as listening to the community (after that shocker of a R5 - granted no fault of yours there Spinner), however i would point out that we've had virtually the same stats since R6/7. Back on topic: my point is that IF you chose to listen, then it was rare for you to actually act upon that suggestion - such as implementating it. At the very least this is/was a perception that I got.

we have often asked the community for opinions,

Again, did you act on these opinions? Sometimes at best.

certain community representatives

Such as Theam and Petru, and/or the alliances?
What about those people who are acting on behalf of the game itself as opposed to representing thier own group?

are very closely involved with the game development like stats etc,

such as #developement, where you instructed me to idle with Petru in the vain hope that some good would come out of it? surely you knew that this was an utter joke.

and we have had plenty of betas and public betas in the last 3 years.

HAHAHAHAHA!
I burst out in laughter when i read this. Yes, you have had a number of Betas. Granted, you may have fixed a large number of bugs etc (btw i fail to see how you can get new bugs without actually changing the game ), but what really gets me is you utterly refusing to listen to and/or implement the valid suggestions from such intelligent people as Tactitus. Many a time he has prophetised some disaster with a round, told you about it, gets ignored, and thenlo and behold! the disaster strikes and you have to go do a mid-round fix and/or just sit on your hands and pray that the roudn will end soon.

You KNOW that the betas that you ran were utter folly.

It is widely popular to say that we in fact do not listen to the community, because in any descision we make, there is a part of the community being ignored. Such is change.

Granted, this is a valid point. But i'd like to see who was benifiting from the decisions that you make each time, because i know that i cant remember one that favoured me or Strategy as a group.

This may just be a perception - but that still counts. Remember the old saying - "Justice must not only be done, it must also be perceived to be done." I think this applies.

It isn't service, it isn't lack of a good enough manual, or lack of listening to the community, that has put PA where it is.

Oh? tbh i wouldnt think PA would be in the hole it is currently in if there was excellent service, an excellent manual (particulary in the past) to allow new and old players to enjoy the game, and finally if players knew that if there was wide support for an improvement that it may get accepted - some optimisim.

Strange enough, there wasnt much critisising about "doing things my way" as long as we were growing and number were pointing upwards.

Be fair. I only started this game once the peak had been reached. I didnt play R1 and r2. Though from what i've heard from riposte and Tactitus, it was laden with interesting bugs like loosing ships when you transfer them from a fleet. I wasnt really aware untill late R3, and if you remember it was R4 havoc when i started pestering you about ship stats.


[b][quote]UN, you are quite right I think, it would cost serious amounts of money to put PA back in the picture, and I see no such investments being made by the new owners. Personally, both me and fudge have worked hard for Jolt, investing 2 thirds of our own salary back into PA to keep it alive. I know, it must have been a clear case of "doing things my own way", and surely something that also should be critisised. Because "the community" has all the answers, and knows the right thing to do.[b][quote]

Dont get me wrong - after re-reading my post i may come across as quite harsh. But i still respect you and Fudge for your dedication to this game. Furball expressed the way i feel:

First I'd like to say that I have a colossal amount of respect for Spinner & fudge for everything they've done with Planetarion. They've plunged their lives into this, sacrificing their own financial well-being, and I don't think that we keep this in mind enough of the time.
I don't intend to blame either of them for most of the problems with the game at the moment - I just feel that I need to say my bit.

Do you really think that any developer selling a game on shelf-space would be keen on taking on PA, and actually PAY US to have us on their CD? Wake up and smell the coffee.

No way. That's why (i think, anyway) i mentioned having to 'pay your own way' such as paying for packaging and/or some advertising or sharing some bandwidth or something. I'm not a complete idiot.

Finally:
Your idea about going onto a CD sold in stores is the one constructive point you make, and even though I have little reason to belive it can be done, I am not in a position to make such calls any more. I do not call the top descisions anymore, and I havent done so all year. I can bring it up with the owners, thats as far as I can go.

'Where there is a will, there is a way.'

There is no easy way to get PA back together again, we agree there. But to blame us for not listening, for not have the manual ready on time or with enough details, for putting our resources and efforts in places you do not think they are best used, is actually quite pointless and irellevant.

Yes, you are quite right. They are now. Anytime before p2p i doubt that they would have gone astray. After R7 or 8 when the playerbase was obviously dead, THEN it was a lost cause.



You often mention huge costs associated with bandwidth - perhaps this is an area that could have been examined for cost cutting? Streamlining code and/or making the pictures that are displayed in a single downloadable file as opposed to sending them down the line each time? I'm not a programmer so i wouldnt know tbh. Anyway, as you said. Its too late now.

[GenChaos]

If you remember, the formula we adopted the first P2P round allowed for players who could not pay by giving their m8s an extra credit to give away to those who needed it. The base entry price provided 2 credits.

The second round of P2P there was an increase in actual player base, despite eliminating the freebie extra credit (quantity discounts are NOT the same), which was a big mistake, and you didn't follow the second part of the plan, which was to open up the free universe to everybody in the last half in order to allow 30-40k new signups, you allowed 8-12k real new players, if I remember right, and didn't multi-check them well enough. And if you had continued the pay-for-some-get-one-free plan I wouldn't have lost 50% of my alliance base in those rounds.... couldn't keep paying for those with no money.

It was the rounds after that that shrank the player base, since all those who couldn't afford to pay dropped out, and no promotion was done, to speak of. Marketing is a an ongoing necessity.

And lastly, Pax having a 1-tick battle and def dropped the player base to only those who can check every hour for inc, so that leaves the few hard core people. I lost 75% of my remaining alliance this roundbecause of the 1-tick battle. That leaves me with an alliance that once numbered 300 players now numbering about 18. All 300 of whom would still be around if we kept the original P2P formula and never did this abortion of 1-tick battles.

And now my gal has quit, GC resigned, etc. Nobody can deal with exact 1-tick battles unless they live and breathe this game 24/7. You made the worst flaw of the game, the demand it made on rl, the main feature of this round. Poof, game over.

So whatever, we'll see which clone propsers based on them learning from these mistakes.

[Wandows]

Originally posted by GenChaos
And lastly, Pax having a 1-tick battle and def dropped the player base to only those who can check every hour for inc, so that leaves the few hard core people. I lost 75% of my remaining alliance this roundbecause of the 1-tick battle. That leaves me with an alliance that once numbered 300 players now numbering about 18. All 300 of whom would still be around if we kept the original P2P formula and never did this abortion of 1-tick battles.

And now my gal has quit, GC resigned, etc. Nobody can deal with exact 1-tick battles unless they live and breathe this game 24/7. You made the worst flaw of the game, the demand it made on rl, the main feature of this round. Poof, game over.

Imho this is plain BS

previous rounds you could get def eta 8/7/6/5 (or even 4 from para/cluster for second/third tick). Now don't get me wrong but this is around 4 ticks you have (and will most likely will need) to gather defence. This means 4 hours online time spend on pleading other ppl to def you. While with 1 hour ticks its 1 tick that matters only 1 hour and then its done.

And its stupid to say that you need to be online 24/7, or did you never hear of something called "coorperation".. it means that everyone of the gal watches the incoming and informs the alliances/defchans whatever details are shared of the planets under attack. and all it needs is 1 person to click on the "overview" menu each tick (10 members in gal means lets say 3 ticks watch for every member), that isn't to hard to do. In 1 tick everything will be arranged and after that all you can get is ingal def, this doesn't like it being to hard really.

And if you can't stop the attacker retail....there are enough ways to get your roids back, as loosing roids isn't really the problem in PaX, they aren't to hard to get nor that easy to keep. And stealing roids means gaining score again and that is all what matters. But looking at your reply i think you are still way to much into old pa to be able to understand what matters in this one....





and another thing...... Jolt is owner now and 5th Season was so stop taking all of this out @ Spinner, and be glad he/they provide(s) you with a game you have enjoyed for so long. Its sooooo easy to say "you did this wrong, you did that wrong", but do you honestly think he doesn't see something needs to change? its so easy to whine and complain without giving anything that helps or might help in any way

[Twist]

when Ultimate Newbie starts ranting I feel much better.
but sure...spinner still knows better.....here you go mr god complex.
you and listening to the players in beta forums?
HARHARHAR nice joke......ooopps...you really ment this serious? ROFL!

[King]

Take for instance your declining numbers, someone above mentioned a price model of a) 10$ a month for a player, 5$ a month for any players they recommend. Has this ever been considered ? if so for what reason was it taken down. <-- why do you ask him this he no longer makes these decisions go ask jolt.

Another thought I have is regarding the overall running of PA, we both know for a long time you and fudge have been pennieless and I REALLY respect that and thank you for the sacrafise, but it seems to me the whole PA hosting and operational setup is flawed. You started this game hosting it yourself and as far as I can see if we get down to basics all you need to survive is

1) Money for you and fudge (good normal wages not some sh*t sacraficial sallery).
2) Servers & hosting
3) Players

#1 is obvious and we all know how much it costs to live
#2 this is where i think your all wrong, i've heard it mention pa traffic is 2 gigs a month, but I have seen dedicated server packages hosted by large US based hosting companies on DECENT servers for $200 a month. Were talking dual P4's 1 gig ram and 500gig a month transfer on a 10meg burstable connection. <-- Jolt has lots and lots of servers (surprise for a game hosting company) I doubt they have much problem with that.


#3 they WOULD come back given a hybrid game.... I KNOW this i am a player and yes i would GLADLY pay 10$ for a hybrid r9/r10 game. <-- well seeing that it cost more than 10 dollars as it is they would be taking a loss, and i am sure jolt would do this as soon as you get 2000 more people to agree with you.

I dont blame you in all honesty I blame Jolt but my question is, whats the probability of getting pa owernership back, operating in a non profit sense other than your wages. Even 3k players paying 10$ a month + others they recommend would make you 30k$ for 3 months play and with a little imagination this would be enough surely. <-- do you think if this actually worked they would have sold the game in the FIRST place?

More community involvement is a must from what I can see and this is why others get annoyed at you is that YES you ask for community opinions but they tend to disappear with no mention of accept or rejection someone needs to volenteer to me a community rep. <-- What is this rep to do? report on everything that has been added to everyone who ever made a sudgestion if you make a sudgestion and it was added into the game surprise they liked it, if not then they didn't like it.

I KNOW there are people here who would code on a part time basis for free and help you REALLLLy make this a good game, dammit I would be one of them but only if PA was owned by YOU or the community and not for jolt who dont give a sh*t about anything but money. <-- another big surprise a company wants a profit i mean jeeze i never expected that and if you truly wanted PA to grow you would offer those services to make the game better to get more people and not even worry about jolt.

I would enjoy seeing serious debate on this because many many many people have ideas and would volenteer to bring pa back to the good old days. <-- the good old days will come back, only if the game was free and spinner and fudge had to scrounge around for money to feed their family.

[Supernova9]

Originally posted by Jeltje
wel sorry i play hattrick aswel and its harder to pick up then planetarion is

foodbalgames have allainces for instance tfd plays hattrick as an allaince only in a difrent form then ure used, we play for an iternal cup. Also the game has federations and boards.

Completely different from PA, there your alliance plays competitively, friendly competition, in PA your alliance would play co-operatively, and definitely not friendly competition from the majority of the universe.

[King]

Originally posted by Sonnenbomber
well, i completly understand spinner in the point he didnt want to listen the pa community again and make changes after their wishes. the prob is, was ever the whole community asked or only the elite players and top allys?
normally the elite guys shout for changes cause they didnt like anything, just remember R4 where the salvage formula was changed for advantage of the topplayers and you can find a lot of examples where this continued.
then spinner tried to ignore all community opinions during planning and coding r10. after the first announcés there was a so called pa senate (with nearly all still playing allys) and we published our opinions about r10 and tried to get in contact with spinner. he ignored us completly.
i dont know if it had changed anything when some of our ideas had been integrated in r10, i dont know if more ppl had paid then.
infact, r10 has only 2100 paid planets till yet and the 2 week trialperiod is nearly over, when we ever see 2500 paid planets we can be happy i think. and i am really frightend for the future of pa atm. cause i cant imagine thats its still rentable with 2500 players. atm i think it will be last pa round for all of us.

but i also want to thank spinner for his work during the last years, i know you really worked hard, and also when you made some mistakes during this time (who doesnt? ), i always had fun in playing pa and i hope it will continue some more rounds and hopefully with a higher playerbase, hope you will find any way to get new ppl in.

Sonnen i read the senate log boy was that just a bunch of bitch that would mainly help alliances but then there are the small allys or the people with out allys then they would complain about that. So if he doesn't listen to either side no one can yell at him and say he is playing favorites.

[Jorinn]

Originally posted by Spinner
2) A game with some 2.000 paying players is not financially viable to support as it is, not with full time employees

I am not sure I belive in a viable economical future for browser-games anymore, there doesnt seem to be many about doing well or even close to it. We hoped being bought by an ISP would give us quite a decent push in the right direction, but so far we have seen little signs of it. The future of PA, if it has one, is being decided upon these days, and I am afraid that is all I can say about it at the present time.

- A Spinner just as worried and unhappy as anyoone here

Heh, thats it I guess, r10 is the last round. Which means there' absolutely p[ositively no way in hell I'll have to play another round of PA. Excellent.

[Illogical]

Ok guys, this is getting pretty personal towards spinner now. Come on seriously how many of you would have stuck for 3 years making a loss....The amount of bandwidth pa used from r2 onwards was huge, and banners make like 0 money. They had to get new servers, adapt to the player base, do support etc. And none of that is free. I honestly believe Spinner is telling the truth about the finances, i mean come on its his game, wouldnt you want to save your own project as apposed to see it die?. And all we have on these forums is constant moaning about how things arent done your way...Think about it what have you given back to PA? are you doing anything to help them? Are you giving support in #cservice or #support or any other channel. Well most of you arent and yet you still complain.

Ok if you have sensible ideas, THAT ARE JUSTIFIED! why dont you email Spinner them. Emails containing "Change price" just because you dont want to pay for people that have worked hard on the game is a bit unfair. If the game costs less money, the developers get less money, eg they wont make any more games. ITs the same with software piracy. But if you can write an idea that is definately going to be a benefit for PA without costing loads of money why dont you do something useful and email it to Spinner?

You cant just moan about it here, you need to do something to help back.

(Sorry for my rant, im just really annoyed at people that all they do is complain)

[TheBull]

I fully understand the financial problems with PA. There is no blame that can be placed for decisions that are driven by lack of funds.

The #1 problem that i've had with PA is the apearance of a HUGE lack of commitment. The Community has always been the #1 point of pride for the creators, yet they have often failed to make it to the weekly creators hours. I'd almost wager to bet that more creators hours have started late, or been canceled than those that have started on time. Missing a Creators Hour does not Hurt PA the game, but it really hurts PA the community. I think that this consistent lack of commitment to the community of PA has lead to feelings of a HUGE communications gap between players and creators.

I WOULD BUY: A CD that contained a LAN version of EVERY ROUND of PA. It would take some recoding since i understand most code is gone, but hey.... it is my dream.

Played since R1, Still having fun.
TheBull

[Merlin]

Well how to word thisdiplomatically without foul language. Yes I do think Spinner listened, then like always blew us off.
Theres always some reason he didn't do what the paying customers wanted. Now if your a real business man you know that if you slag off your customers and don't give them what they want, they'll find someplace else to get it, or they will do without and put you out of business.
The customers are not interested in being slagged by the creator of a game.
Last round and the rounds before showed a steady progression in the game. And no matter the bitching the hardcore played on, but not now. But this round was an almost complete departure from that game. I am a paying customer, I said in the beta's that this version sucked wind big time AS HAVE MANY (perhaps the majority of players). Those of you apologizing for Spinner please get out your wallet and pay for everyone or shut up.
The majority of people from the crap I've waded through want the old stats, ships and races with the cool new stuff welded on. That would not be and is not very hard to do. BUT Spinner has basically told us to slag off YET again. So when the player base shrinks even farther, yes it will indeed be his fault. Not Jolts, Simtechs or the players who keep asking for what they want in the game....... BUT Spinners own personal Waterloo.
Don't praise the guy up for killing his own game. That ego of his is costing PA its life. Most of the worlds player base remains untapped. Thats not Spinners fault....but funny he did say it would get advertized......but I never saw it and I surf everyday.
So SPINNER, give the players what they keep asking for and STOP playing creator GOD, and maybe just maybe there will be a chance to keep PA.

Otherwise, well the PA clones are all over the net, and the games from which this one is now ripped off are many and free.
Get over yourself......program a game you can sell once again to the people that are PAYING to play it.
Don't tell us where to get off its you who doesn't get it.

YOU ARE the one constant in the decline of Planetarion.

[Som1]

I'm sure increasing the price twice as much every new rounds helped your cause... Your decisions were always money-orientated and never community orientated.... shame on you.

Though I must admit renaming Planetarion to Planetarion II was a great effort to relive the game

[Leshy]

Originally posted by Som1
I'm sure increasing the price twice as much every new rounds helped your cause... Your decisions were always money-orientated and never community orientated.... shame on you.

Incidentally, Spinner had zilch all to do with Jolt increasing the price.

[Som1]

Originally posted by Leshy
Incidentally, Spinner had zilch all to do with Jolt increasing the price.

I was speaking before jolt buys pa

[Leshy]

Originally posted by Som1
I was speaking before jolt buys pa

Ah. Yes.

Shame on Spinner for feeding his family.

[W]

I can't believe people are STILL writing multiple paragraphs about this, and even give suggestions on how to fix things.

I tried this THREE YEARS AGO, and Spinner is STILL using the same arguments he was back then. You can just give up, cause whatever you write here won't make **** of a difference. There's just not enough competence in this place.

Originally posted by Leshy
Ah. Yes.

Shame on Spinner for feeding his family.

He should have thought of that before going neck deep in debt.

[TheBull]

I forgot to mention the #2 reason that I think makes people feel that the creators don't communicate. The MOTD has never been a message of the day since R1. Back then there were usually daily updates on bug fixes. The last several rounds the MOTD seems to change about once a month....

Just a little creator communication thing that drives me nuts.
TheBull