Round 10.5?

[Qdeathstar]

not really.. :-/ As it has to do with round 10.5

[mist]

i think it's gone on a hike :P

auda, yes, they seemed to miss the point when you said that more players doesn't neccessarily mean less proffit. however, you missed mine pointing out that lowering prices isn't the perfect answer in all cases.

i agree that planetarion needs more players, but lets face it - if it were free it wouldn't gain many. pax has about 8K frees didn't it? still not as many as paid a few rounds previous. if planetarion is to be big again it needs to change, so that those who have left will come back.

-mist

[Qdeathstar]

isnt exercise (hiking) catagoricly good?

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by Qdeathstar

isnt exercise (hiking) catagoricly good?

No. If you do it all the time, it leads to all sorts of knee and ankle damage, plus damage to all the Quokkas you jump on etc .

MaT: whilst your idea is good in theory, what do you do with unfilled galaxies? If a GC (a paying customer who deserves the best quality game) is in a galaxy all on his/her own, then their round is going to be a shocker. If these GC were merged to form random galaxies, you effectively have people who have paid to be the leader of a galaxy being a simple lemming (and not getting a resource bonus etc) - not the best idea.

so...


(Btw: Spinner, you still havent answered for your crimes :P)

[Spinner]

In your poll-thread, I have.

[wakey]

Originally Posted by therealmig

£10 for a gal is kinda cheap, The speedgames were charge at £10 for 3 accounts, so based on that oayment system a gal of 10 is going to cost £33. Thats £23 Jolt will lose per gal, maybe £30 is more resonable?

Just my two cents worth

£10 for 3 accounts imho sounds perfect as it is just the right number to allow the whole private pack situation to be tried. After all this is on paper a perfect comprise in the galaxy structure argument and after being rejected as an idea every round since private galaxies were put forward in r3 its about time they were tried (Packs of 3 friends, 5 packs mixed together to make a gaalxy of 15)

[Qdeathstar]

as long as 10L is 20$ u can count me out :-/. Its not like i know anyone for norwiegh or whatever who wants me to send the dollar bills for credits. Your shafting the americans, i dont like it. Bah.

[Qdeathstar]

make it 10 of the equivalent units of money as the pount


10 bucks US, Australia, and 10L in europe..

[wakey]

Originally Posted by mist

i think it's gone on a hike :P

auda, yes, they seemed to miss the point when you said that more players doesn't neccessarily mean less proffit. however, you missed mine pointing out that lowering prices isn't the perfect answer in all cases.

i agree that planetarion needs more players, but lets face it - if it were free it wouldn't gain many. pax has about 8K frees didn't it? still not as many as paid a few rounds previous. if planetarion is to be big again it needs to change, so that those who have left will come back.

-mist

As mist says much of PA's problem isnt the cost,, if gamers were a bunch who were put off by cost we wouldnt see these significantly more expensive to run games liek SWG and Eve Online doing so well. These after all are games which firstly require you to shell out in the region of £30 for the software (plus usually 30 day subscription) only to then be asked for a further £7-15 EVER MONTH to continue playing. And thats not all you then have the "updates" which you have to shell out another £20-30 for ever 6-12 months to continue getting the full benifit from.

I now these MMORPG's arent quite the same as PA but it does show that gamers as a group are not people who are too bothered about spending money on games they find enjoyable which tells you theres a flaw in PA as a product if people are now not willing to pay in the numbers of the past. Free rounds may give a quick boost for a round or so but if its to be more than just a boost the product needs to be fixed

[Qdeathstar]

Wakey, no one is asking for a free ride or a free round. Im asking that you make priced reasonable. The lower your prices are, the higher the demand will be. Its that simple. The difference between the games you menchion, and PA, is that PA is not massively multiplayer when compared to these games and its browser based with no software. 20 bucks every 3 months is 80 bucks a year for an internet game which is being coppied at an alarming rate. You may offer a better service, but for 80 dollars a year, one can get a free version of this, and pay for the subscription costs for one of the games your talking about. You have to make it so that what your offering is worth paying for. If its not worth paying for, then people will pay for it out of loyalty only.

[wakey]

Originally Posted by Qdeathstar

make it 10 of the equivalent units of money as the pount


10 bucks US, Australia, and 10L in europe..

Then your 'shafting' other nations

10USD = 5.3GBP
10AUD = 4.1GBP
10CAD = 4GBP
10EUR = 6.6GBP

As it is 10GBPcomes to just under 19USD and the USD is pretty weak atm which makes a stated figure of 20USD a perfect amount to list it as unless your planning on having it update in real time depending on the current exchange rate

[wakey]

Originally Posted by Qdeathstar

Wakey, no one is asking for a free ride or a free round. Im asking that you make priced reasonable. The lower your prices are, the higher the demand will be. Its that simple. The difference between the games you menchion, and PA, is that PA is not massively multiplayer when compared to these games and its browser based with no software. 20 bucks every 3 months is 80 bucks a year for an internet game which is being coppied at an alarming rate. You may offer a better service, but for 80 dollars a year, one can get a free version of this, and pay for the subscription costs for one of the games your talking about. You have to make it so that what your offering is worth paying for. If its not worth paying for, then people will pay for it out of loyalty only.

But its not that the price is TOO HIGH, its the fact the product isnt upto standard. Offering lower prices simply wont acheive anything but put the game in a position of running at a loss (or bigger loss). The thing that puts people off is that the product isnt strong enough. Its riddled with holes and is totally unbalanced which puts too many people off playing, this has been shown by the fact many attempts to offer free accounts have been made BUT they never offer a magical boost to the playerbase. if free accounts dont do this a price reduction isnt either. If the games fixed and is made balanced and fun again then we have a game worth playing which will have people willing to shell out on, dont fix the game and more and more people will decided its not worth paying for no matter the cost

[mist]

surely, part of the problem is that games like eve put you to sleep when you're offline, you're pretty much immune to anything bad happening. if you wanna do something else for a week, then all well and good

planetarion doesn't offer that, maybe that's why it's got less players - it's less convenient?

-mist

[JC]

http://pirate.planetarion.com/showthread.php?t=175090

You are charged according to the current exchange rate, as is explained in that thread.

[Tomkat]

If each race has a unique pod now, which one does the Zik get? They didn't get a unique one in the past... or will they have the FR pod, and no other race gets it?

[Citizen Kabuto]

mist is correct ,pa is a game that requires you to be online 24/7.
In earlier rounds ie 3,4 and 5 we had a massive playerbase that
meant you could risk going to bed and getting away with it, with so few
players now , those with no access at work ,kids that want the pc for
homework/ other games, leaves mr average player disadvantaged.
Someone once posted " you only get out the game what you put in "
This may be true , but logging on and finding all your hard work destroyed
is pretty soul destroying and too much for some to take at a tenner a go,
once bashed you very rarely recover and most give up.
I love this game and will probably never stop till it does, but i will always
be one of the also rans due to the time i can spend on it .
I blame my parents for having a son 30 years too early :-)

[Eskimo]

dodgy.

[Qdeathstar]

i think that is a substandard product mainly because there isnt enough players...

[cbk100]

finaly we are going a bit in the right direction...

All we need now is the old eta system or with a few tweaks, but the current eta system is just too boring and static. We need the ability to attack for more ticks and ofc to def for more ticks. There should also be different eta for different classes as it will bring in more strategy and more gameplay.
Also the 6k roid limit should be kicked so far away that it will never find its way back... the most lame rule I have ever heard about...
Also I think it would make it more fun if some ships could target more than just 1 class of ships (ofc. it would have to sacrifise some of its firepower to be able to target more classes.

And well then finaly we ofc. need planetarion to be free cause otherwise there will not be enough ppl playing and there will be stagnation and mass blocking as we have seen too often in the latest rounds...

And spinner couldn't it be fun with a new race which had some kind of special ability or maybe a combination of the 4 current races?

cbk

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by Qdeathstar

i think that is a substandard product mainly because there isnt enough players...

If it wasn't a substandard product, why have the player numbers been going down rather quickly in each round since r3?

[wakey]

Originally Posted by mist

surely, part of the problem is that games like eve put you to sleep when you're offline, you're pretty much immune to anything bad happening. if you wanna do something else for a week, then all well and good

planetarion doesn't offer that, maybe that's why it's got less players - it's less convenient?

-mist

While your right that this helps games like eve it doesnt mean this has to be a limiting factor to PA and it certainly doesnt change the fact that gamers on the whole are willing to pay alot of money to play something they enjoy (To play EVE and SWG you ahve to pay almost £100 EACH in subscription fees a year without counting the software costs).

Originally Posted by Qdeathstar

i think that is a substandard product mainly because there isnt enough players...

Far from it, all large numbers do is paper over some of the cracks making them larger issues further down the line (as we are seeing now). Back as early as round 2 I posted a reply to a thread on these forums stating that the game really wasnt that good and was riddled with problems and that the ONLY thing making it successful was the community. A community which back then was strong, vibrant and friendly. Then came round 3 where fury/legion/rb cheated themselves into private galaxies which later resulted in private galaxies for all in r4. These private galaxies ended up taking the vibrant community this game had and splitting it into loads of smaller communities based along alliance lines, One big vibrant community is considerable stronger and more fun than many smaller ones that are closed off to anyone not in the required alliances. if p2p had been implemented back in r2 before this community decided to drive a stake through its heart by 'demanding' private galaxies it would have gone from streangth to streangth as the players were hapy with the way the game felt but as soon as you remove the community factor people started to see how weak and flawed the game actually was and people were already starting to think about leaving. The game needed to improve to make up for the lack of strong community but the finacial restrains simply wouldnt allow it so round after round the game continued with the major problems left unattended until we ahve a situation now where we have a game thats no fun to play for most and is at a stage where if drastic changes arent made to make it more accessable to those outside the top alliance the game will die

Originally Posted by cbk100

All we need now is the old eta system or with a few tweaks, but the current eta system is just too boring and static. We need the ability to attack for more ticks and ofc to def for more ticks. There should also be different eta for different classes as it will bring in more strategy and more gameplay.

While theres no doubt that the old eta and attack length led to more stratergy theres no way ithat they should return. The eta system of PAX was one of the few features put in place to limit alliances strangleholds that worked and while its effectivness was damaged by the lack of realistic controls in other areas it still had some effect. Why do i say this, well simply because by having the single eta with an eta bonus to planets of your alliance you open up the ability to put further controls on alliances to help balance the game up thus making it more appealing for all players. With the old system the eta bonus alliances wouldnt have to signup in game, they could choose to stay outside the game loosing the eta bonus safe in the knowledge that they wouldnt be restricted by any in game size limits and the extra members would most likly be enough to make it worthwhile. The fact they are outside the game would also mean that they would be free to setup blocks much easier, with the limitations on size it means that the only blocks possible are those of an attacking nature only and have no defencsive benifit at all thus preventing them gaining more power than they already have.

As for only having 1 tick attacks, yes it limits damage you can do to a planet and yes this isnt great when your trying to take out an enemy BUT it is great that you can now not do the same amount of damage to smaller player whom bigger players seem to enjoy bashing to peices for no reason. Why should it be so easy for you to destroy someone who was minding their own business

Originally Posted by cbk100

Also the 6k roid limit should be kicked so far away that it will never find its way back... the most lame rule I have ever heard about...

The point of that imho is to a) limit the gap that a handful of players manage to pull out each round which makes the game less competaive and b) remove some of the importance of roids which are often the cause for unneccesary bashing hence its not a bad feature

Originally Posted by cbk100

And well then finaly we ofc. need planetarion to be free cause otherwise there will not be enough ppl playing and there will be stagnation and mass blocking as we have seen too often in the latest rounds...

As ive said before a free round wont do much, you could pay player $10 to play and a fair number would refuse to put themselves through the experiance of playing the game again . The game needs to become fun again and hence get a good reputation once again rather than the one of being a dull, unfriendly game thats controlled by a couple of alliances

[^MDK^MAN^]

I think to attract casual players (Wich is what PA needs) maybe some kind of bonus would be in order?

Like 10% more res for people not in an alliance and for alliancemembers below Top 10

and maybe 10% more armor, 10% more damage....


and finally people that havent been logged in for like 8 Hours should get 100% increase in armor and that way if they get attacked when they are offline they dont loose so much ships....

[G.K Zhukov]

Originally Posted by ^MDK^MAN^

I think to attract casual players (Wich is what PA needs) maybe some kind of bonus would be in order?

Like 10% more res for people not in an alliance and for alliancemembers below Top 10

and maybe 10% more armor, 10% more damage....


and finally people that havent been logged in for like 8 Hours should get 100% increase in armor and that way if they get attacked when they are offline they dont loose so much ships....

Or maybe we shouldnt let anyone attack each other?

[^MDK^MAN^]

Originally Posted by G.K Zhukov

Or maybe we shouldnt let anyone attack each other?

Well if casual players can keep there ships little longer (Instead of being bashed to death) i think it would be more phun for everyone, But i might be wrong?

[mist]

Originally Posted by ^MDK^MAN^

and finally people that havent been logged in for like 8 Hours should get 100% increase in armor and that way if they get attacked when they are offline they dont loose so much ships....

like this idea, although i suspect it'd be husely exploitable

-mist

[cbk100]

Originally Posted by wakey

While theres no doubt that the old eta and attack length led to more stratergy theres no way ithat they should return. The eta system of PAX was one of the few features put in place to limit alliances strangleholds that worked and while its effectivness was damaged by the lack of realistic controls in other areas it still had some effect. Why do i say this, well simply because by having the single eta with an eta bonus to planets of your alliance you open up the ability to put further controls on alliances to help balance the game up thus making it more appealing for all players. With the old system the eta bonus alliances wouldnt have to signup in game, they could choose to stay outside the game loosing the eta bonus safe in the knowledge that they wouldnt be restricted by any in game size limits and the extra members would most likly be enough to make it worthwhile. The fact they are outside the game would also mean that they would be free to setup blocks much easier, with the limitations on size it means that the only blocks possible are those of an attacking nature only and have no defencsive benifit at all thus preventing them gaining more power than they already have.

As for only having 1 tick attacks, yes it limits damage you can do to a planet and yes this isnt great when your trying to take out an enemy BUT it is great that you can now not do the same amount of damage to smaller player whom bigger players seem to enjoy bashing to peices for no reason. Why should it be so easy for you to destroy someone who was minding their own business

The point of that imho is to a) limit the gap that a handful of players manage to pull out each round which makes the game less competaive and b) remove some of the importance of roids which are often the cause for unneccesary bashing hence its not a bad feature

As ive said before a free round wont do much, you could pay player $10 to play and a fair number would refuse to put themselves through the experiance of playing the game again . The game needs to become fun again and hence get a good reputation once again rather than the one of being a dull, unfriendly game thats controlled by a couple of alliances

Well, you have a point that the current eta system gives ppl incentive to become a part of an ingame alliance, but noone says that they can't have that with the old system... all you need to do is to give ppl a -1 eta bonus if they sign up for an in game alliance and the problem you talk about will be solved since ppl will have just as much incentive to become part of an alliance.

And for the 2nd point, noone has said that 3 ticks attack time will damage a target more than it does now with 1 tick... All you need to do is to take cap for 1 tick at target a bit down and take the damage of the ships a bit down or increse the armour. And what you fail to think about is that with the old system it was posible to def for 6 ticks while it was only posible to attack for 3 ticks which gave the defender an advantage. And well for your last comment... try to find one of the top players who plays to bash n00bs... if they are in the top they play for roids and its not profitable to bash n00bs so you are far off at that point.

And for your 3rd point you say that it is good to have a max limit of roids cause it balance the game and cause you say that the importance of roids is an incentive for bashing... Well for your first comment I can partly agree that is balance the game, but what you fail to remember is that it is MOST OFTEN the good and active ppl who are in the top and when they reach 6k roids they can't be arsed to play anymore since all they can do to become #1 is to collect their income and defend their planet. If those ppl become bored like we saw in r10 then you lose not just them, but some of the ppl they lead and ofc. they don't want to sign up next round since they remember how boring it was to collect income and do nothing but defending... For your 2nd statement, there is not much to say beside the fact that you are wrong as I have stated earlier (the more important roids are the less bashing there will be).

For your last statement you say that a free PA will not do anything... Well for that, I will turn your attention to P******a... a game that uses far worse servers, has far less qualified operators, has been up and running for a far shorter period of time and uses a gameplay which is OLD.... BUT IT IS FREE and you don't have to be a mathematic genious to figure out that its because its free that it has FAR more ppl playing it than PA does, so when you say that p2p is not a factor its simply WRONG. You are right that the game has to be interesting again, but a game like this will never be interesting unless FAR more ppl plays the game and that will simply not happen as long as its p2p.
How can I then say that you may ask... its simple... When I started back in r4 there was loads and more loads of ppl playing and a rough estimate would be that the avg. age of the ppl playing was some 17-18. Now the avg. age is some 20-22 (ofc also just a rough estimate). At least for me its quite easy to see the trend... What you need is fresh blood and not us old ppl with no time because of gf/wife, uni/work, children and all other things that comes into our life when we get trough the teenages.
It is not much of a woner that ppl who has never played the game b4 doesn't want to pay... I don't want to pay for a game that I know close to nothing about either... and for sure not a game which needs a VERY high amount of players to be truely fun when I know that only about 1/10th of what is needed will sign up.

cbk

[Qdeathstar]

the problem with giving ten percent res to players who arent in an alliance would be that noobies wont have any idea what you are talking about and it wont interest them. You need to make the game seem interesting, from the view point of "ive never seen this game before" Also, web-surf quite a bit.. and ive seen zero ads for planetarion. So unless your already interested in online-space-strategy (And if you are, and your not playing planetarion) you've probly already chosen where you want to play.

ALthough from the Planetarion players point of view, other games seem so much different or too simular, not good, or whatever, a noobie who is chosing which game he wants to play, will probly look at free stuff first, unless you can give him a good reason why he should switch.

Ive seen nothing on the front page of PA that does this. Saying that you've been doing for ten rounds, and that its a space strategy game, just doesnt do it. Everyone says that. For you to get new ppl to pay money, you need to make your game not only better but also appear to be better.

As for the game never being good.. i really have no idea what your talking about. I had a great deal of fun upp until around round 5-6. Then the rounds were ok... round 10 just wasnt my thing. But the speed round was better. Numbers make the game better simply because they allow for more targets, ie, addign more new/different opponents. Planetarion right now really isnt any different that any other space stragegy game, aside from its look, the fact that it was the first, (from what i remember), and the fact that it charges money.

[G.K Zhukov]

Originally Posted by cbk100

For your last statement you say that a free PA will not do anything... Well for that, I will turn your attention to P******a... a game that uses far worse servers, has far less qualified operators, has been up and running for a far shorter period of time and uses a gameplay which is OLD

********'s admins are far better at deleting cheaters than Spinner ever was.
So that.

[G.K Zhukov]

Originally Posted by ^MDK^MAN^

Well if casual players can keep there ships little longer (Instead of being bashed to death) i think it would be more phun for everyone, But i might be wrong?

Sure, the casual players needs some protection. But if you take away every incentive to be active, how fun is that?
PA is a war game, making it into some sort of soscial-sim makes it wank. Back in the early rounds, before priv gals, it was okey to be a casual player. Why? Becouse there were a wast universe, so the active core didnt hit the same players over and over again..
And besides, you could init just a few roids, so you wasnt a good target

[^MDK^MAN^]

Originally Posted by G.K Zhukov

********'s admins are far better at deleting cheaters than Spinner ever was.
So that.

Free games allways attract massive amount multi cheaters, So its understanding that they have huge job deleting people ^^

[G.K Zhukov]

Originally Posted by ^MDK^MAN^

Free games allways attract massive amount multi cheaters, So its understanding that they have huge job deleting people ^^

Its the same people who play ********, that played planetarion.
The same people, the same cheaters.

[cbk100]

Originally Posted by G.K Zhukov

********'s admins are far better at deleting cheaters than Spinner ever was.
So that.

I wonder why you say that... maybe because I claim that the PA opperators are the better, but the thing is that I think most if not all ppl will agree that PA opperators are better, both at finding multi planets(or at least just as good at this point) and running the game in generel (the fact is that simple cheaters are easy to find whereas cheaters using more advanced tools are imposible to find).

Nomatter what I don't really understand what you want to say with that statement. I think I have sufficient proof that my statement is correct (that pa team is better than pia team) and if you think I don't then please let me know so I can try to express myself a bit more in detail. But on the other side I don't think you have any kind of proof for what you say and you haven't even tried to argue why you should be more right than me... other than you THINK (quite subjective) that pia opperators are better at detecting cheaters, and that is just not good enough argumentation.

Sorry that my argumentation is a little sparse here too but I just don't have the time to go into detail, but if you still don't agree with me then let me know and try to tell me why you should be more right than I am, and then I will get back to you either one of the next days.

cbk

[G.K Zhukov]

If "you think that you have sufficent proof that your statement is correct", then please bring forward the arguments/facts.
My point is that someone whos providing a free game, seems to be far better than PA/Spinner ever was in deleting cheaters.

1) The other game have banned proxies.
2) The other game have tools who single out accounts where there are logins from two different countries, among other things.
3) In The other game, a certain alliance from a certain country, seems to have huge problems not getting deleted
4) PA had huge problems deleting even the most obvious cheaters. The other game seems to be doing this with far greater ease.

[Chika]

Originally Posted by G.K Zhukov

If "you think that you have sufficent proof that your statement is correct", then please bring forward the arguments/facts.
My point is that someone whos providing a free game, seems to be far better than PA/Spinner ever was in deleting cheaters.

1) The other game have banned proxies.
2) The other game have tools who single out accounts where there are logins from two different countries, among other things.
3) In The other game, a certain alliance from a certain country, seems to have huge problems not getting deleted
4) PA had huge problems deleting even the most obvious cheaters. The other game seems to be doing this with far greater ease.

This other game you speak of probably doesn't have as many dedicated people as PA does. Nor does it have the dedication that we have seen over YEARS from the PA team. If PA was just starting, then you would have a point, but most of the community is set in their ways. Most other games seem to be copy cats. PA is the MOTHER of all games of this genre most say and would agree. So we can say PA raised these other games. Mothers raise their kids (these other copycats) to be better than them in ways. So these other games will improve where we made mistakes. But hey, there is nothing like MOMMA now is it.

edited for some typo errors

[^MDK^MAN^]

Originally Posted by G.K Zhukov

If "you think that you have sufficent proof that your statement is correct", then please bring forward the arguments/facts.
My point is that someone whos providing a free game, seems to be far better than PA/Spinner ever was in deleting cheaters.

1) The other game have banned proxies.
2) The other game have tools who single out accounts where there are logins from two different countries, among other things.
3) In The other game, a certain alliance from a certain country, seems to have huge problems not getting deleted
4) PA had huge problems deleting even the most obvious cheaters. The other game seems to be doing this with far greater ease.

2... thats strange

I log my account everyday from 2 diffrent countries lol

[mist]

Originally Posted by G.K Zhukov

1) The other game have banned proxies.
2) The other game have tools who single out accounts where there are logins from two different countries, among other things.
3) In The other game, a certain alliance from a certain country, seems to have huge problems not getting deleted
4) PA had huge problems deleting even the most obvious cheaters. The other game seems to be doing this with far greater ease.

1) banning proxies removes lots of legitemate users, and is therefore rather stupid
2) banning by ip address alone means that anyone who lives near a border and mvoes over it to work (lo EU) or who has to use proxies to get past firewalls is removed, again, rather stupid
3) see points 1 and 2. i'm guessing the certain alliance is the one who were fairly helpful wrt cheaters in pa, alienating them would seem... rather stupid
4) the other game is probably doing it with great ease, while alienating a large amount of players. people are always complaining that pa don't have enough players, so doing this would seem... *shock* rather stupid

somehow, i see a pattern forming.

-mist

[wakey]

Originally Posted by ^MDK^MAN^

I think to attract casual players (Wich is what PA needs) maybe some kind of bonus would be in order?

Like 10% more res for people not in an alliance and for alliancemembers below Top 10

and maybe 10% more armor, 10% more damage....


and finally people that havent been logged in for like 8 Hours should get 100% increase in armor and that way if they get attacked when they are offline they dont loose so much ships....

This would encourage alliances to stay unofficial though which is a situation where they potentially can gain more power over the game

[wakey]

Originally Posted by cbk100

Well, you have a point that the current eta system gives ppl incentive to become a part of an ingame alliance, but noone says that they can't have that with the old system... all you need to do is to give ppl a -1 eta bonus if they sign up for an in game alliance and the problem you talk about will be solved since ppl will have just as much incentive to become part of an alliance.

Actually its not the members who need the incentive to sign up to the ingame alliance, its the alliances themselves.

I really could see alot of alliance opting out of the ingame alliance to remove themselves of any limitations the ingame system imposses on them because you could work around the eta bonus it gives you. After all if you are limited to lets say 100 members but you think you can easierly get 150 members it could very well be worth losing the eta advantage for these extra numbers after all the only attacks you might have trouble defending would be eta 6's and such attacks arent normally that much of an issue due to the ships involved.

Originally Posted by cbk100

And for the 2nd point, noone has said that 3 ticks attack time will damage a target more than it does now with 1 tick... All you need to do is to take cap for 1 tick at target a bit down and take the damage of the ships a bit down or increse the armour. And what you fail to think about is that with the old system it was posible to def for 6 ticks while it was only posible to attack for 3 ticks which gave the defender an advantage. And well for your last comment... try to find one of the top players who plays to bash n00bs... if they are in the top they play for roids and its not profitable to bash n00bs so you are far off at that point.

So you limit the damage for each tick, what exactly is the benifit of increasing the eta window. All i can see happening with in combination with seperate eta for ships is to make it even more appealing for alliance to withdraw from the game officially as you would be able to defend even easier

As for the roid comments, thats strange I must have imagined those big players who seem to find my planet every round when i'm only just in range and end up bashing me. The key to this game currently is getting the most roids for the least losses, this means picking on the smallest targets possible. Ok I might not be a player who's right at the bottom of the rung or one whos a 'n00b' but i'm still significantly smaller than those people who bash me as they know they can hit me with very little losses.

Originally Posted by cbk100

And for your 3rd point you say that it is good to have a max limit of roids cause it balance the game and cause you say that the importance of roids is an incentive for bashing... Well for your first comment I can partly agree that is balance the game, but what you fail to remember is that it is MOST OFTEN the good and active ppl who are in the top and when they reach 6k roids they can't be arsed to play anymore since all they can do to become #1 is to collect their income and defend their planet. If those ppl become bored like we saw in r10 then you lose not just them, but some of the ppl they lead and ofc. they don't want to sign up next round since they remember how boring it was to collect income and do nothing but defending... For your 2nd statement, there is not much to say beside the fact that you are wrong as I have stated earlier (the more important roids are the less bashing there will be).

I dont believe I used the word balance as this is how i would decribe it, its a long way off balancing the game however what it does do is keep the top players closer to everyone else. Theres been rounds in the past where the top planets are so far ahead they have total control over the game well before the game ends (see r4 rankings http://www.caeneus.org/planetarion/round4planets.html for an example). Now this must get boring for the one in the lead knowing they are intouchable and it must also be boring for those below knowing they cant catch. I'm not saying limiting them to 6k roids is the perfect solution but its a better than leting them continually grow at an exponential rate and I dont personally have a better idea of how to control it.

Oh and again on the roids things, the lowest score target you can bash = the most ropids for least losses you gain = more ships for future attacks = more roids. Bashing is related to roids, theres nothing else to get out of bashing a small player than to get easy roids

Originally Posted by cbk100

For your last statement you say that a free PA will not do anything... Well for that, I will turn your attention to P******a... a game that uses far worse servers, has far less qualified operators, has been up and running for a far shorter period of time and uses a gameplay which is OLD.... BUT IT IS FREE and you don't have to be a mathematic genious to figure out that its because its free that it has FAR more ppl playing it than PA does, so when you say that p2p is not a factor its simply WRONG. You are right that the game has to be interesting again, but a game like this will never be interesting unless FAR more ppl plays the game and that will simply not happen as long as its p2p.
How can I then say that you may ask... its simple... When I started back in r4 there was loads and more loads of ppl playing and a rough estimate would be that the avg. age of the ppl playing was some 17-18. Now the avg. age is some 20-22 (ofc also just a rough estimate). At least for me its quite easy to see the trend... What you need is fresh blood and not us old ppl with no time because of gf/wife, uni/work, children and all other things that comes into our life when we get trough the teenages.
It is not much of a woner that ppl who has never played the game b4 doesn't want to pay... I don't want to pay for a game that I know close to nothing about either... and for sure not a game which needs a VERY high amount of players to be truely fun when I know that only about 1/10th of what is needed will sign up.

cbk

When I say it wont have any effect I dont mean it wont get any new players, yes there will be some (mainly those who want to play the game but dont wish to give anything back finacially be it paying for the account, clicking banners ect and hence arent helping the game survive one bit) but the numbers wont be significantly large and they will not see the game get bigger each round. Witha free round we are probally only talking about a few k more players most of whome will quit well before the rounds over and probally not come back the round after. The game has no hook since the community started become split due to fury/legion/rb cheating in r3 and the private galaxy situation this foced in r4. We are no longer a community which is warm, vibrant and friendly. We wont take new players under our wing, we dont mix like we used to with those not in our alliance ect and as such a flawed game just simply wont cut it. You either need a great game or a great community, the games never really been great and by r4 the community had passed its peak and was breaking down. The community is I believe beyond help atm, we will never get the old sense of community back within this player base so the game needs saved by being good, once new players are on there way in because the games good there is then perhaps a chance to rebuild the community spirt that used to make the game so appealing

It doesnt matter if the game costs or is free, without a hook neither will see it take off, the only difference is that regrowth might be a little quicker with a free game than a paid one as the word of mouth will get around quicker

[wakey]

Originally Posted by Qdeathstar

As for the game never being good.. i really have no idea what your talking about. I had a great deal of fun upp until around round 5-6. Then the rounds were ok... round 10 just wasnt my thing. But the speed round was better. Numbers make the game better simply because they allow for more targets, ie, addign more new/different opponents. Planetarion right now really isnt any different that any other space stragegy game, aside from its look, the fact that it was the first, (from what i remember), and the fact that it charges money.

Theres a difference between a game being fun and a game being good.The whole 'fun' element comes from alot more than just the game itself and these other elements can make a bad game seem fun (r1-3 for example was fun no matter how long ticks took - often 2,3 or 4 hours - as the community aspects made it fun). The game itself is too basic and too flawed to really be considered a great game on its own, it requires the other elements to make it fun

[wakey]

Originally Posted by G.K Zhukov

If "you think that you have sufficent proof that your statement is correct", then please bring forward the arguments/facts.
My point is that someone whos providing a free game, seems to be far better than PA/Spinner ever was in deleting cheaters.

1) The other game have banned proxies.
2) The other game have tools who single out accounts where there are logins from two different countries, among other things.
3) In The other game, a certain alliance from a certain country, seems to have huge problems not getting deleted
4) PA had huge problems deleting even the most obvious cheaters. The other game seems to be doing this with far greater ease.

Ever thought that perhaps that the reason it seems this way is for two distinct reasons

1) These PA clones have been able to see what PA did wrong and improve on it so ofc their early rounds will be better on the dealing with cheater front than PA's was
2) Since PA went p2p its harder to delete suspected cheaters, while a free game can delete you for the slighest reason a paid game has to be much more careful. They have paid for the service and unless you have solid proof they broke the rules you cant really delete them without breaking laws and potentially giving yourself problems

as for your point on proxies, deleting people ONLY for this reason is very harsh. Anyone on NTL will know the transparent proxies we have to use can be very tempremental and its not uncommon for us have to use other proxies to get access to the game. Use of proxy should only be in conjuntion with other evidence

[Kal]

or if u r going to use a proxy you could tell pateam in advance with your reasons

[wakey]

Originally Posted by KalVirtus

or if u r going to use a proxy you could tell pateam in advance with your reasons

So you cant access the game normally for whatever reason, you email PATeam and wait a responce. 24 hours later you get a responce but its too late as the reason is no longer an issue and youve just logged in to find that time wheer you couldnt access the page has seen you destroyed

[Makhil]

Originally Posted by Spinner

Ah, finally, the announcement went up, and I am allowed to speak (:

I have implemented the old stat known as "Initiative" again, people seemed to feel this was needed. I dont disagree. I have, however, improved the Initiative system from what it was before, so now ships can share initiative, they dont have to have their own. (i.e. 3 ships can have the same initiative, and thus fire simultanously)

I don't understand that part, can someone explain plz ?

[mens]

Initiative is the order in which the ships shoot.
in pax all the ships shot at the same time.
in prior rounds every ship had their own initiative ie xans/cloaked shot first, pds last.
The new thing is that some of the ships can have the same initiative, not all have unique ones.

[cbk100]

Originally Posted by G.K Zhukov

If "you think that you have sufficent proof that your statement is correct", then please bring forward the arguments/facts.
My point is that someone whos providing a free game, seems to be far better than PA/Spinner ever was in deleting cheaters.

1) The other game have banned proxies.
2) The other game have tools who single out accounts where there are logins from two different countries, among other things.
3) In The other game, a certain alliance from a certain country, seems to have huge problems not getting deleted
4) PA had huge problems deleting even the most obvious cheaters. The other game seems to be doing this with far greater ease.

I don't think I have to comment too much on this since other has done it more or less well for me. If you still don't I don't agree I don't see much more point in trying to convince you.
All I have to add which has not been said yet is that if you want to cheat you just cheat... the skilled cheaters will always be one step ahead and that you should know too (NO ACCUSE but you are experienced and well conected just like me).
And one final thing is that when you say that pia deletes ppl without problem, just because of IPs from different countries, because of proxies and so on you also say that they delete ppl who has done nothing wrong. There has to be a balance and since pa is a paid game PA HQ can't just delete by will as pia can. When PA deletes planets they delete because of concrete evidence... pia is a free game so they can do as they wish...and they do... but in my oppinion that is the wrong way to do it. (the fact is that the law is on my side cause you can't just take something away from ppl when they have paid for it, UNLESS YOU HAVE CONCRETE AND UNDOUBTABLE EVIDENCE). Maybe you don't trust me, but then trust the law or if not that then please just accept that jolt and PA HQ has to follow it. ( I guess and hope that is enough for me to say in that matter)

cbk

[cbk100]

Originally Posted by wakey

Actually its not the members who need the incentive to sign up to the ingame alliance, its the alliances themselves.

I really could see alot of alliance opting out of the ingame alliance to remove themselves of any limitations the ingame system imposses on them because you could work around the eta bonus it gives you. After all if you are limited to lets say 100 members but you think you can easierly get 150 members it could very well be worth losing the eta advantage for these extra numbers after all the only attacks you might have trouble defending would be eta 6's and such attacks arent normally that much of an issue due to the ships involved.

So you limit the damage for each tick, what exactly is the benifit of increasing the eta window. All i can see happening with in combination with seperate eta for ships is to make it even more appealing for alliance to withdraw from the game officially as you would be able to defend even easier

As for the roid comments, thats strange I must have imagined those big players who seem to find my planet every round when i'm only just in range and end up bashing me. The key to this game currently is getting the most roids for the least losses, this means picking on the smallest targets possible. Ok I might not be a player who's right at the bottom of the rung or one whos a 'n00b' but i'm still significantly smaller than those people who bash me as they know they can hit me with very little losses.

I dont believe I used the word balance as this is how i would decribe it, its a long way off balancing the game however what it does do is keep the top players closer to everyone else. Theres been rounds in the past where the top planets are so far ahead they have total control over the game well before the game ends (see r4 rankings http://www.caeneus.org/planetarion/round4planets.html for an example). Now this must get boring for the one in the lead knowing they are intouchable and it must also be boring for those below knowing they cant catch. I'm not saying limiting them to 6k roids is the perfect solution but its a better than leting them continually grow at an exponential rate and I dont personally have a better idea of how to control it.

Oh and again on the roids things, the lowest score target you can bash = the most ropids for least losses you gain = more ships for future attacks = more roids. Bashing is related to roids, theres nothing else to get out of bashing a small player than to get easy roids

When I say it wont have any effect I dont mean it wont get any new players, yes there will be some (mainly those who want to play the game but dont wish to give anything back finacially be it paying for the account, clicking banners ect and hence arent helping the game survive one bit) but the numbers wont be significantly large and they will not see the game get bigger each round. Witha free round we are probally only talking about a few k more players most of whome will quit well before the rounds over and probally not come back the round after. The game has no hook since the community started become split due to fury/legion/rb cheating in r3 and the private galaxy situation this foced in r4. We are no longer a community which is warm, vibrant and friendly. We wont take new players under our wing, we dont mix like we used to with those not in our alliance ect and as such a flawed game just simply wont cut it. You either need a great game or a great community, the games never really been great and by r4 the community had passed its peak and was breaking down. The community is I believe beyond help atm, we will never get the old sense of community back within this player base so the game needs saved by being good, once new players are on there way in because the games good there is then perhaps a chance to rebuild the community spirt that used to make the game so appealing

It doesnt matter if the game costs or is free, without a hook neither will see it take off, the only difference is that regrowth might be a little quicker with a free game than a paid one as the word of mouth will get around quicker

Hmm, I agree you have a point in that both ordinary ppl AND alliance needs and incentive to sign up for an in game alliance for them to do it, but what you fail to understand is that having 150 ppl in an alliance is not 50% better than having 100 or whatever it is you try to say. Having 150 members instead of 100 means that you will have 50% more attack fleets and def fleets so i guess that is what you base your statement on, but please remember that you will in avg also get 50% more incomings and the bigger an alliance is (when it reach a sertain level) the more ineffective it becomes so actualy I would argue that it is a disadvantage to be 150 ppl compared to 100, but it is a LONG discussion which I can't and will not take up here (if you want we can take it to email or PM here on forums where I have a longer time range to reply)).
And well if some alliances with 150 ppl in it decides to rather stay out of an in game alliance instead of splitting up in 2 alliances with 75 in each and getting the -1 eta bonus I will claim that their HCs are stupit cause you can try to ask any DC what -1 eta means... it means A LOT and that is the answer you will get anywhere you ask).

hmmm, in your last post you argued that it was too easy to bash ppl and now I gives you a solution which will make it harder in any degree you want and then you argue that, that is wrong?? what the hell is that for a kind if argumentation? If it is this degree of mud-trowing this will turn into then just warn me in the top of your post so I can skip it totaly, and how you think decresing damage inflicted by ships on other ships can give allainces incentive to not join in game alliances is beond my immagination... let me just ask you why alliances def their members? and let me answer: that is to protect the roids... what has killing ships to do with capping roids in this matter? answer: nothing. If I was to follow your argumentation that alliances would not sign up in game since it would be easer to def the members since damage inflicted by attacker is smaller. Then what you say is that alliances def to prevent damage since that is the only variable I want changed. Then if I keep following your argumentation I will just say that def is never good cause then nothing is killed and thus everything is good... I hope Im not the only one failing to see the logic in such kind of crap talking.

Once again big ppl attack for roids and not to kill so if you are always bashed its because you are always having too many roids compared to your ships and to your capability to defend yourself. My advice is either to get yourself an alliance that can def you or get less roids...

I can't be arsed and don't have time to go up and look if you used the word balance but I wondered about this: "I dont believe I used the word balance as this is how i would decribe it, its a long way off balancing the game however what it does do is keep the top players closer to everyone else. "
That is what you write... So first you claim that you didn't use the word balance (not that it really matters) but still what the last lines of it says is that what you mean is "balance". Seems a bit weak argumentation to first say directly that you don't mean "balance" and then just after you indirectly say that you mean "balance". I have no point with this but its still quite fun...

Well back to bussiness... you give as example that in r4 the top players had total control over the universe. I don't know how you define "top players", but nomatter if you define it as 10 planets, or 100 planets (which maybe is the right guess if you ask most ppl) or 1k planets and even 10k planets you are wrong. For anyone to control anything, they need to be able to do as they wish with the rest of the planets... well in that round I think it was about 80k planets that was in the universe and you could try to give me control over the planets ranked from 1k to 80k and I can assure you that it is posible to take down the top 1k. What that shows is that its not because the top planets can control the rest of the universe that they are upthere but its because the rest of the universe just can't get together and do anything about it and because those top players were simply better than the rest of the universe. How can it be wrong that its the best players that win?
However you might be right that in the later rounds the top planets had a bigger power than in the earlier rounds but its still just because of the fact that the other just can't get together and fight the big ones and its still because the top players are better than the smaller ones. The fact is that the good ones who sacrifise a lot and put lots of hours into the game do good and the ones who doesn't put as much time into it doesn't do that well. How can that be wrong? Try to look at the real world and see how things are working... If you think this is a frightening picture then you will be shocked to dead when you open your eyes and realise how the real world is working.

You come up with this statement: "Oh and again on the roids things, the lowest score target you can bash = the most ropids for least losses you gain = more ships for future attacks = more roids. Bashing is related to roids, theres nothing else to get out of bashing a small player than to get easy roids"
since you put it as an equation then let me try to rearrange it according to mathematic rules. You say: the lowest score target you can bash = more roids
All I have done is to put your last statement equal your last statement which is fully legal...
So what you say is that everyone should just do a simple calculation: "own planet score"/5 and you will know the target that gives you the most roids for the least risk... Well I am affraid I will have to tell you that such a statement is a wrong statement for obvious reasons which I can't be arsed to get into detail with here(if you need explicit proof then let me know) thus I have falsified your statement and that should be enough.

Well, I had a talk with spinner some months ago about how much they really earned from banners back in the good old days. I know its not the same economy and that its maybe not posible to earn as much today. I also hope you will accept that I can't give any numbers on what they earned even though spinner actualy gave me some round number. But what I will say is that it was a fairly (if not VERY) huge amount of money and back then there was no paying players so how can you argue that ppl who doesn't want to pay for an account is also ppl who doesn't click on banners when you don't know anything about it?
If that is how we should argue I think I will say that the earth is flat cause I can give you even more proof of that fact than you gave me of the fact that non paying players doesn't click on banners. (back to mud trowing and talking bullshit).

You say that to make the game free will not make any significant difference to the amount of ppl who plays the game and that the player base will not grow every round... well let me just say that ofc. it will not grow every round cause then you can just argue that the amounts of rounds could go to infinity and then I would have to argue that there is infinite many ppl in the world and that is ofc. not posible, but your other statement that it will not help significantly is simply wrong just as I will claim that in the first rounds after PA being made free the amount of ppl who will play will rise each round. First of all I have to remind you that the only thing that was made different compared to r4 which was the last free round is that it has been p2p and the trend has been downward sloping every round since then. You have a very hard time to argue aggainst that trend... even though you might try to do that and still claim that its not p2p which has been the reason then you should also try to argue aggainst basic microeconomic thinking (might even be posible too), but you also have to argue aggainst pure phych of humens, and maybe the worst you will have to argue aggainst pure logic.... everything that is free is VERY VERY and 1000 more times VERY much more easy to get ppl to "buy" and try than things that is free.

Back in r4 it was FAR harder to be new to this game than it is today, and I can garentee you that since that was when I started and when many of my m8s started. Back then the big alliaces had amazingly hard rewuerements to live up to unless you knew someone high in the alliances... Back in r4 and r5 it took me like 2 months to just get into RB... try to find a new player today who put just as much time into the game as I did back then who hadn't gotten into one of the best alliances (if that was what he wanted) by the end of a 2 month period... you can't find that cause the fact is that today the alliances needs new players in a far larger degree than back then. The community is not more unfriendly now than it was back then, but today "only" the hardcore ppl with the big mouth and huge ego (its not a wonder that good players has that since its often needed to become a good player) is left and that is in an universe with far less ppl so its not a wonder that those ppl are heard and fill a lot more in this universe than they did in the HUGE universe earlier.

As I argued in my last post to make it free is the only way how we can make younger ppl play (those who has the time) and it is the only way we can boost the size of the universe so if we are not willing to make it free its first of all not posible to get new ppl to play for it (ofc. unless spinner can make something truely unique which requeres mass development into graphics and all of such stuff) is to make it free.

Sorry for the length but its needed when argumentation has to be just a bit good... just a shame I haven't got more time since some more time could have been nice for this post.

cbk

[General1]

I'm to lazy to read all, any1 can sumarize it in lets say max 10 lines orso
ta

[G.K Zhukov]

Originally Posted by wakey

Ever thought that perhaps that the reason it seems this way is for two distinct reasons

1) These PA clones have been able to see what PA did wrong and improve on it so ofc their early rounds will be better on the dealing with cheater front than PA's was
2) Since PA went p2p its harder to delete suspected cheaters, while a free game can delete you for the slighest reason a paid game has to be much more careful. They have paid for the service and unless you have solid proof they broke the rules you cant really delete them without breaking laws and potentially giving yourself problems

as for your point on proxies, deleting people ONLY for this reason is very harsh. Anyone on NTL will know the transparent proxies we have to use can be very tempremental and its not uncommon for us have to use other proxies to get access to the game. Use of proxy should only be in conjuntion with other evidence

1) Even when people offered to make those tools FOR FREE, PA said NO. Spinner/PA has not been WILLING TO LEARN, and then you cannot really expect improvment, can you?

2) r 9.5 was free, and I wasnt exactly impressed.

Make it part of the rules smarta**.

[G.K Zhukov]

Originally Posted by cbk100

I don't think I have to comment too much on this since other has done it more or less well for me. If you still don't I don't agree I don't see much more point in trying to convince you.
All I have to add which has not been said yet is that if you want to cheat you just cheat... the skilled cheaters will always be one step ahead and that you should know too (NO ACCUSE but you are experienced and well conected just like me).
And one final thing is that when you say that pia deletes ppl without problem, just because of IPs from different countries, because of proxies and so on you also say that they delete ppl who has done nothing wrong. There has to be a balance and since pa is a paid game PA HQ can't just delete by will as pia can. When PA deletes planets they delete because of concrete evidence... pia is a free game so they can do as they wish...and they do... but in my oppinion that is the wrong way to do it. (the fact is that the law is on my side cause you can't just take something away from ppl when they have paid for it, UNLESS YOU HAVE CONCRETE AND UNDOUBTABLE EVIDENCE). Maybe you don't trust me, but then trust the law or if not that then please just accept that jolt and PA HQ has to follow it. ( I guess and hope that is enough for me to say in that matter)

Not really a lot of either arguments and facts here. Guess I will have to reply to your bla-bla-bla then.

1) Even in the free rounds multihunting was almost non-existing. It was the players who had to the the work, to provide 110% evidence.
2) "just becouse of ips from different countries".. this is the attitude witch only people who are a) naive b) to nice to do anything useful or to be effective or c) idiots have..
Its very simple. NOBODY can move from the USA to Europe and back again within 3 hours, just to make an exampel. If it happen, you know you have a) cheater or b) someone who hasnt obeyed the rules and used proxy. Then you delete. SO EASY!
3) This is a game, not rl murder trial.
4) Its fairly obvious in rl, but people who are cought cheating again and again, should be given a final kick in the arse, or deleted on less evidence than others. (Exampel, Scorpio seems to be having control over two accounts from the IP he is using..MULTING, DELETE.) (Exampel, Sjor attacks a small planet again and again, FARMING AHOY, DELETE).

Spinner/PA has been so inefective catching cheaters, that it has partly been to blame for the downfall of PA.
A game like PA depends on a rather equal playing field. Its just that simple

[Qdeathstar]

Theres a difference between a game being fun and a game being good.The whole 'fun' element comes from alot more than just the game itself and these other elements can make a bad game seem fun (r1-3 for example was fun no matter how long ticks took - often 2,3 or 4 hours - as the community aspects made it fun). The game itself is too basic and too flawed to really be considered a great game on its own, it requires the other elements to make it fun

Using that logic, arent all massively mulitplayer online strategy games inherently flawed? For with out the people, no game is going to be fun that is set up around needing players :-/ Planetarion isnt a one-player, two player, or fifty player game. It needs 10k people playing it for it to be good. As all games of its genre do.