As I made some posts at the start of last round about my first impressions logging in, I thought I'd make a new one.
Key first impression is that it looks a lot nicer, the new skins have been integrated very nicly into the portal and the game. But what about the forums? I'd like to see them updated as well. Keeping them on an old skin makes it look as though no one cares about the forums.
The new comunit is also very nice. I'd request a feature to remove personal channels from the list though, as I made one to test it which I don't want on the list. The new comunit appears to work acceptably on an iphone as far as any browser based chat system can. (For thoose that don't know iphone's can;t run applications in the background, so when you use a different app the browser based irc conneciton wopuld be closed.) Interestingly trying to change to a different tab in safari on an iphone is very slow if you are using comunit (and tabbing back als resets the irc conenction - oh well). Hopefully there will soon be some irc clients that maintain connections when the app isn't running and utilise push notifications from iphone software 3.0.
To comment further on the general experience of the game on an iphonem the game looks nice, but pages render very very slowly - i don;t think its a connection speed issue, it feels like there is something on the page that is processor intensive to render (many other web pages have this problem - e.g.
www.formula1.com). Its a shame that while the new skins look nice, that they have damaged the gameplay experience on the iphone.
The new price of the game intrigues me (£5.57?) - its not a big enough increase to put me off paying which is good. But I do look at it and think its silly - its just a reallky weird amount to increase the price by. Hopefully it will have the desired affect of increasing income though.
I think in general the updates to the game will improve the take up of new players rather than hinder it, which is good, but there is more to do. While We've had a graphics/styling update to the game, the user interface is still fundamentally broken. What has been done is a kin to putting a fresh coat of paint on the wall, but not botheirng to fill in the cracks. The game's interface needs to be more intuitive, it needs ot be obvious to new players what they need to do without having to read new player guides or the manual. While I think its good that Pete is trying to get a new player guide together, I do think he is missing the point. The game should be designed so that a new player guide isn't needed. I'd even go as far to say that most players shouldn't have the need to read the manual either. Everything should just work.
In terms of changes I'd have liked to the game that don't appear to have been announced or implemented:
-I'd have liked something to protect new players from loosing their ships (e.g. base fleet not taking part in combat)
-I'd have liked some changes to quests - I'd like to the more advanced quests to give some rewards - as its at least something that the inactive players can try to have fun with
One thing that worries me about the future of the game is that Pete appears to want to attract people similar to current players i.e. hardcore players. I'm not sure that strategy will ever work, as I think anyone with any serious time to invest in online gaming is going to be playing other games e.g. wow, eve, etc. I think Planetarion's real strength is that becuase its simple, you don't actually need to be online all the time to do well - you just need to be online at the right times.
I don't know if I'll end up playing this round as I now can;t access any of the PA sites from work, and frankly I'm too busy. But I'd still like the game to continue to grow and improve.