Jolt working on pa?

[TheRat]

Just wondering, since we havent heard anything for quite a while (at least not anything that I have noticed). Has jolt been working on ways to improve the player base of planetarion lately, through marketting or planned marketting or anything related? The game is growing again, new alliances are created, old alliances are returning. Pa is comming back to life on its own, and a little "push" from Jolt could really get stuff going.

-TheRat

[Rocklobster[Dok]]

couldnt agree more

[Jonas]

Seconded

[Intruder]

and the so called "community initiative"?? Havent heard anything either.

[biffy]

The community initiative was something we were supporting but I believe the main person behind it - alch - retired from major activity in PA and it went quiet.

With regards to marketing and promoting the game we continue to look at what we can do, we will be doing a free game of some description later this month but beyond that I can't give any details at the moment.

[TheRat]

Originally Posted by biffy

we will be doing a free game of some description later this month but beyond that I can't give any details at the moment.

Great! Very glad to hear that Jolt is showing the community that they DO care about the game! Also, why are you working at this hour?

[noah02]

oooh a free game
there funny because farms crop up everywere when things are free

[Orion Treet]

Hehe, not so pessimistic noah r4 was fun as well even though 1/4th were farms at least

[Orion Treet]

Free short 'round' sounds great, hopefully will atract a lot of new players who would play the next real round.

[noah02]

Isnt there always an open beta anyways ?
And thats usually free.

[noah02]

Oh and sign up 72 hours before havoc and you got the best free game in the world

[Blixxard]

I knew faces would light up.

[Desse]

So with a free round coming up, we can expect LDK to play another round ?

[Zeus]

It would be interesting to read what marketing strategy is being implimented to attract new players, as I'm sure many others would?

Perhaps the community could help comming up with some good, cost effective ways too attract new members to our community?

Why not have an open discussion forum on the subject?

My point being, if one if not being implimented at this time, you are already too late for next round. So lets kick start it eh?

[JC]

Originally Posted by Intruder

and the so called "community initiative"?? Havent heard anything either.

You are advertising it in your sig. Surely that means you are some part of it or do you all just advertise it to be seen as part of the in crowd? Its no wonder things like that fail when most of the people just jump in to be seen to be doing something good and earn a few Brownie points and then drop out before any real work gets done.

[ils]

aa freee 500 ticks round would might do the thingy. and jolt maybee can market more

[Envious]

Originally Posted by Desse

So with a free round coming up, we can expect LDK to play another round ?

Alliance ranks:

1. LDK
2. LDK's brothers
3. LDK's parents and grandparents
4. LDK's dogs + cats
...

[alch]

The community initiative was something we were supporting but I believe the main person behind it - alch - retired from major activity in PA and it went quiet.

yeah sorry, as much as i would help, i find it really hard right now to run more and more community initiative while i dont have the free time to do it, the community initiative isnt something limited to myself and ill be happy to see other people following the path and organizing events for the community.

I have to say i played last round after not playing round11, and i quite enjoyed it.

[flikman]

You found the time to play PA then.

[Kal]

don't get to excited, no one said a free round, just some sort of free game.

Round 13 will be a normal round, but who knows what might happen before it starts......

[mist]

kal, there's already a post on the portal saying there'll be a free speedgame, and iirc at least one paid one.

tbh, i'm not quite sure why there's the free one, but jolt're obviously listening to the community in their own way as normal.

-mist

[Bartje]

well it will be fun to see if they can keep the 1 min ticks going then at the 'free' speedgame...
coz iirc during r12 beta there we so many players that they had to put the ticks to 5 mins
so my guess is itll be free, but only for like 250 orso players... nice tactic to gain new customers Jolt

[Kal]

Originally Posted by mist

kal, there's already a post on the portal saying there'll be a free speedgame, and iirc at least one paid one.

tbh, i'm not quite sure why there's the free one, but jolt're obviously listening to the community in their own way as normal.

-mist

reason for a free speedgame is to actually get some players, paid speedgames tend to be quite small and dull theese days unfortuntly, but with a free one first we can hopefully get some people playing who wouldn;t normally and get people addicted to speedgames again.

[Zeus]

if they limit the free speedgame (which they may have too due to demand), they will ONLY get excisting players playing in it.

If they managed to get some new players in it, they hopefully will enjoy it, but when the real game starts with 1 hr ticks, they may find it boring and not what they expected, then go elsewhere which gives them Free 1min ticks.

Planetarion with 1min ticks is NOT what your selling. If your going to use the "FREE" type of marketing too attract new players, then give them the true service you wish to market & sell and not the speedgame, which isnt for newbies, but for hardcore players, lets be honest about it.

This free speedgame is really only for the current hardcore players who will have the time to play. By all means give it to them, god only knows they surely decirve it. But dont lets yourselfs be fooled that this free speedgame will attract new paying players to this community.

[Conall]

Maybe I read it wrong Zeus, but I think the free speed game was to hook some people for the paid speed game, not really PA Full. I could be wrong, but that is how I read it. In theory tho, if PA was going to sell speed games to the public as a primary product it might work. Partiularly if the the games were in 4-6 hour blocks over the course of a week or two. By that I mean a speed game starts at 18:00 GMT and and ends 22:00 GMT and starts back up and shuts down at the same time each day for a couple weeks. That way a speed game is like live combat and you can actually have a RL between the game times. Two weeks at 4 hour spans is 3300 + ticks. Run 6 - 4 hour time blocks a day and you can generate some revenue if you get people through the doors.

[Kal]

Originally Posted by Conall

Maybe I read it wrong Zeus, but I think the free speed game was to hook some people for the paid speed game, not really PA Full. I could be wrong, but that is how I read it. In theory tho, if PA was going to sell speed games to the public as a primary product it might work. Partiularly if the the games were in 4-6 hour blocks over the course of a week or two. By that I mean a speed game starts at 18:00 GMT and and ends 22:00 GMT and starts back up and shuts down at the same time each day for a couple weeks. That way a speed game is like live combat and you can actually have a RL between the game times. Two weeks at 4 hour spans is 3300 + ticks. Run 6 - 4 hour time blocks a day and you can generate some revenue if you get people through the doors.

basically due to problems with one of our servers we only have one availiable for games of any type, meaning we can only run speed games when the main game is not running, if we coudl get an increased demand for speed games i.e. by offering a free one so more people can try them, then it would be worth running speedgames more often and perhpas of different types and as such it would be worth replacing the annoying server. I do not think there will have to be any limit to the number of players in the free speedgame as we have solved a lot of load issues over the cause of this round. The round 13 code will have even more optimisations which might remove the downtime due to backups among other things. So future speedgames in the future should defintly have fewer load issues.

[biffy]

At the moment we cannot afford to run a full game for free.

We covered this in a previous thread towards the end of last year.

[JC]

I agree with pretty much everything Zeus said.

I cant see any paid speed game having more than 200 or so players because most people realise they dont stand a chance if they arent going to be active for 24 hours straight (or however long) and most people cant spare that amount of time. I'm sure the free one will attract more players, but they will soon realise that speedgames arent a place for newbies and they will be bashed from all sides at all times. They wont come back for more, whereas they might do if a free normal round (or half round) had been offered.

[mist]

i'd have said "won't afford" was more accurate.

that asside, what zeus said

-mist

[DrunkenViking]

Extreme advertising work, extreme advertising is expencive. Free real rounds work, free rounds is expencive. In my opinion there will never be a good flow of new players without some serious expendure, as an example the combination of the two methods mentioned. With the current frustrated players trying their best to keep/bring back old players, we wont gain more players than we loose, maybe even loose more than we gain. A free speedround may work, but it depends on the advertising it gets. An article on www.planetarion.com..... do you think none-planetarion players will read that? i dont. I say start mailing info to the magazines, gamers-sites, game-newsgroups and game-forums... ok this is what the players tried on their own initiative, but you need to get some weight behind it, like an official jolt mail. Heck, invite the editors, admins and similars of the mentioned mags, sites, newsgroups and forums to play a free speedround, get them intriqued.

Who walks into a music store to buy a CD of an artist they've never heard shit about?

Advertising and publicity...

[Veil05]

Originally Posted by JC

I agree with pretty much everything Zeus said.

I cant see any paid speed game having more than 200 or so players because most people realise they dont stand a chance if they arent going to be active for 24 hours straight (or however long) and most people cant spare that amount of time. I'm sure the free one will attract more players, but they will soon realise that speedgames arent a place for newbies and they will be bashed from all sides at all times. They wont come back for more, whereas they might do if a free normal round (or half round) had been offered.

actually i think your wrong, speed games are a perfect learning enviroment for newbies. its so fast paced, your practically taking out politics (until later in round when you need to have 2 cents about you). where as in a normal game, if ur not in a good allaince from day one, your not really going anywhere in a hurry.

[Orion Treet]

Originally Posted by Conall

Maybe I read it wrong Zeus, but I think the free speed game was to hook some people for the paid speed game, not really PA Full. I could be wrong, but that is how I read it. In theory tho, if PA was going to sell speed games to the public as a primary product it might work. Partiularly if the the games were in 4-6 hour blocks over the course of a week or two. By that I mean a speed game starts at 18:00 GMT and and ends 22:00 GMT and starts back up and shuts down at the same time each day for a couple weeks. That way a speed game is like live combat and you can actually have a RL between the game times. Two weeks at 4 hour spans is 3300 + ticks. Run 6 - 4 hour time blocks a day and you can generate some revenue if you get people through the doors.

Speedgame is a marathon, only the strong with high constitution survive

[alch]

Well as usual, the Speedgames wont be much of use to the newbies or new potential customer who never played the game, it can be a good environment for new alliances style veneratio or other alliances who want to play as some kind of bg like R6B did and have some fun.

The FREE speedgames are good and nice for people who allready played PA and will push them to play and have fun without paying for a credit, while the main goal of The marketing team (if there is any) is to attract new players, such event wont ensure this goal, but you will definitly will get some happy customer within the community for giving them a free product.

I dont really know what Jolt is doing lately, tho i didnt hear from them lately, it seems that as usual, there is 2 team working separatly, the PA team and the community, both are doing their things and the communication is horrible between them, i would have expected more official from the behalf of the PA TEAM.

I expect from the PA TEAM much more... While i know they are doing their best, it seems to me that most of the work is being done by a small core within the PA team while the effort is spread on too much things.
My experience would say that when a little core is spreading its effort on much more initiative they can handle, 1) it will take more time to handle everything 2) there is no chance they can excel in one of the category as they will try to run against the clock and try to accomplish everything in this time frame.

I think Jolt should be more involved, i think PA team should grow to a bigger team in order to try to excel in all the categories they are handling, and they should aswell drop some category as they allready learnt from past experience that it is just a waste of time (did i hear portan no one visit?)