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Unread 27 Oct 2003, 14:44   #1
Browolf
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improving the gaming experience not the game mechanics.

I think there are a number of factors which could be added which could improve the prospects of the game, make it grow and be more interesting. I'm not gonna talk uch about game mechanics cos after 10 rounds they dont seem to be wildly different and we still have the same old alliance problems.

In the gaming world, whether you buy them or play them online, Planetarion is quite a cold and clinical game. There's no scene, there's no history, there's not a lot to imagine or inspire. Whilst lack of graphics leads to this to some extent there's no reason why other means cant exist to inspire and attract players.

The online gaming market is constantly expanding, just look on www.mpogd.com and see how many new games there are.an insane number. Imho pa *is* the best game, but I dont think it stands out from the crowd and simply rewriting game mechanics isnt making the difference. The most important thing pa can do is appear more realistic and imaginative. Abstractions arent easy to imagine.

I have some ideas on how to improve the "image" of pa. I must say that the best improvement in PaX over other versions is the alliance rankings. Suddenly there is an added dimension to the game for players of all levels. What we do in the game helps our choosen alliance achieve its position and we can see what that is and who our nearest rivals are.

Ideas:
  1. Timeframe. Whilst ticks help us know what's going on when, they hardly fire the imagination. This *is* the genre of science fiction and helps to have a timeframe. It's doesnt matter whether it has some basis in reality or is completely made up. The most important thing is that previous rounds clearly took place in the past and future rounds in the future.
    A round can then be called e.g. Age of the whatever, Using the world 'Age' indicates the round is a specific time period in the pa timeline. Each round becomes a subsequent period in this timeline. I not saying get rid of the concept of ticks, just give it more meaning. e.g. like saying 24 hours represents 24 days.
    90 rl days would be 2160 game days. the tick then can be like <age><year><day> pt x we still have the pt for the game mechanics, the rest for the timeframe.
    This leads to...
  2. History. A new player joining the game can be inspired by the history of the timeline. This is a game of galactic battles afterall. Alliances come and go, many stay dominant throught the rounds All alliances have some history, a new player may join smaller less pro alliances but feeling a part of something that can has history no matter how small the role has got to be good for keeping people playing. Even as an existing player I'd sure like to know what actually happened in previous rounds.
  3. News. History works in the long term, but we need news within the rounds. Alliances rankings goes someway towards this but we need more. Something like a daily newservice detailing what's happening across the galaxy. I may be in a top10 alliance but frankly I dont really know whats going on. Sure i can read the noticeboards, but it seems more unsubstantiated rumours than actual facts. I dont want to have to spend hours reading nonsense to gain some small idea about who's doing what. I suspect n00b players have even less idea. The whole point is to feel part of the universe even if you are out in the sticks so to speak. With the new alliance parts of the game it should be possible to have some analysis of alliance fleet movements and gains and losses. That can be written into Daily news. Each alliance should have an ambassador who can speak for the alliance Daily news can feature actual facts, some rumours and reported alliance retoric.
  4. Races. Races are all wrong. In generic sci-fi, alliances are made up of a given number of specific races. In this light, what we have as races should be jobs, or racial specialisation. E.g. Cathaar are good on research so they'd be scientists. Ruler of planet should be ruler of race. so e.g. Lord bob of the babylonians and the babylonians
    being a race of scientists. Then alliances are made up of separate races. which makes a lot more sense. It's easier to sell a sensible idea than an abstract one. It may even be of use to desigate alliances as good, neutral, evil to further enlarge the scene.
  5. Promotion. The ideas detailed are all about providing meaning and sense to the game which enables it to be promoted better to the general public and gaming population and for keeping players in the game. Their imagination can be fired. With these ideas we can say something like: (i have made the details up)

    "Planetarion: Age of the Tiger (round 11)
    The Age of the Unicorn has passed, the galactic battles have finally subsided. A peace established but the darkness has returned, the pirates of Fang with their allies the Dragons have conquered the universe after many years of Intense battles with alliances such as Elysium, Eclipse and Wolfpack and skirmishes with many other alliances. In the coming age the battle between good and evil will begin anew, forces, friends and enemies will be renewed. Are you up to joining the struggle?

    Planetarion is a game of alliances: Join a team, make a stand, fight the good fight, make a difference."


    it's no good saying all this without the promoting imagination within the game. If they get here and find an cold clinical game, feeling alone, being bashed, not knowing thats happening on a universal scale, they are hardly gonna stay long.

    I'm not saying that opportunities dont exist, alliances do welcome new members, but all in all it seems a lot of luck is required, being in the right place at the right time, knowing people in the game already, randomly getting into a good galaxy, being confident to go out and find the opportunities.

Morale in pa is terrible. Look at pr forum. see all the leaving threads, where are the "hello i'm new" threads? You gotta really love the concept of pa to want to stay it seems. As I do. I wont leave, but it's sad to see a potentially great game go down the pan because it cant attract new blood.

I hope you all dont think my ideas foolish

~Browolf
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Last edited by wakey; 27 Oct 2003 at 15:14. Reason: Just formatted your list a little better to make it easier to read (I hope)
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Unread 27 Oct 2003, 15:07   #2
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Re: improving the gaming experience not the game mechanics.

nice ideas, pa could defintly do with being more inspiring
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Unread 27 Oct 2003, 15:51   #3
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Re: improving the gaming experience not the game mechanics.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Browolf
  1. Timeframe. Whilst ticks help us know what's going on when, they hardly fire the imagination. This *is* the genre of science fiction and helps to have a timeframe. It's doesnt matter whether it has some basis in reality or is completely made up. The most important thing is that previous rounds clearly took place in the past and future rounds in the future.
    A round can then be called e.g. Age of the whatever, Using the world 'Age' indicates the round is a specific time period in the pa timeline. Each round becomes a subsequent period in this timeline. I not saying get rid of the concept of ticks, just give it more meaning. e.g. like saying 24 hours represents 24 days.
    90 rl days would be 2160 game days. the tick then can be like <age><year><day> pt x we still have the pt for the game mechanics, the rest for the timeframe.
    This leads to...
  1. Interesting idea although I think the wording might need changed, after all 'Age' seems a little medieval or fantasy based rather than that of the sci-fi genre

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Browolf
  2. History. A new player joining the game can be inspired by the history of the timeline. This is a game of galactic battles afterall. Alliances come and go, many stay dominant throught the rounds All alliances have some history, a new player may join smaller less pro alliances but feeling a part of something that can has history no matter how small the role has got to be good for keeping people playing. Even as an existing player I'd sure like to know what actually happened in previous rounds.
  3. The problem with trying to compose an alliance history (as has been seen in the past) is that no-one agrees with others accounts of history. For example I could easily throw together a history of F-Crew and our 'interaction' with other alliances but you can guarantee that people who have been members of alliances we have had run ins with would disagree. Scouse for example still has this idea that his alliance (think it was ImpA) successfully destroyed a number of F-Crew HC?s, including me on a raid one night, however we strongly deny this as we had no incoming that night and most importantly the planets he claimed to have attacked didn't have any ships at base as we were out on a number of attacks (was in the middle of the WaC ? F-Crew war when every ship we had was hitting a WaC target or defending a concentrated attack on one of our members)

    I could go on and list 30+ separate incidents including F-Crew where there?s been a public disagreement either on forums or on IRC and that's just one alliance who hasn?t been a threat and hasn?t done much but to try and survive day by day since r4 so imagine how many alliance like Fury, legion ect would have disagreements on. Now which side do you go onto believe and take down as history?


    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Browolf
  4. News. History works in the long term, but we need news within the rounds. Alliances rankings goes someway towards this but we need more. Something like a daily newservice detailing what's happening across the galaxy. I may be in a top10 alliance but frankly I dont really know whats going on. Sure i can read the noticeboards, but it seems more unsubstantiated rumours than actual facts. I dont want to have to spend hours reading nonsense to gain some small idea about who's doing what. I suspect n00b players have even less idea. The whole point is to feel part of the universe even if you are out in the sticks so to speak. With the new alliance parts of the game it should be possible to have some analysis of alliance fleet movements and gains and losses. That can be written into Daily news. Each alliance should have an ambassador who can speak for the alliance Daily news can feature actual facts, some rumours and reported alliance retoric.
  5. This is an old idea. The original idea was to have a page in the style of a newspaper which would update with news on battles ect that had happened in the last 24 hours. The problem was trying to find a way to implement it. Now a basic template where each day planet names, ship amounts ect could be placed into automatically was something that was possible but it was something that would have quickly lost appeal as every day it would be basically the same just with different planets mentioned. Each issue needs to be more unique but that would require quotes ect from those involved and to do this automatically wouldn?t be the most simple thing to organise and as such is was deemed too difficult to implement without adding to the game.

    Now if someone can come up with a way for it to work I?m sure it might get listened to again but until then its something that's a none starter.


    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Browolf
  6. Races. Races are all wrong. In generic sci-fi, alliances are made up of a given number of specific races. In this light, what we have as races should be jobs, or racial specialisation. E.g. Cathaar are good on research so they'd be scientists. Ruler of planet should be ruler of race. so e.g. Lord bob of the babylonians and the babylonians
    being a race of scientists. Then alliances are made up of separate races. which makes a lot more sense. It's easier to sell a sensible idea than an abstract one. It may even be of use to desigate alliances as good, neutral, evil to further enlarge the scene.
  7. tbh I'm having a little trouble understanding this point. Are you saying we would choose a job type (Soldiers, Scientists ect) and then come up with our own race name rather than a planet name?

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Browolf
  8. Promotion. The ideas detailed are all about providing meaning and sense to the game which enables it to be promoted better to the general public and gaming population and for keeping players in the game. Their imagination can be fired. With these ideas we can say something like: (i have made the details up)

    "Planetarion: Age of the Tiger (round 11)
    The Age of the Unicorn has passed, the galactic battles have finally subsided. A peace established but the darkness has returned, the pirates of Fang with their allies the Dragons have conquered the universe after many years of Intense battles with alliances such as Elysium, Eclipse and Wolfpack and skirmishes with many other alliances. In the coming age the battle between good and evil will begin anew, forces, friends and enemies will be renewed. Are you up to joining the struggle?

    Planetarion is a game of alliances: Join a team, make a stand, fight the good fight, make a difference."


    it's no good saying all this without the promoting imagination within the game. If they get here and find an cold clinical game, feeling alone, being bashed, not knowing thats happening on a universal scale, they are hardly gonna stay long.

    I'm not saying that opportunities dont exist, alliances do welcome new members, but all in all it seems a lot of luck is required, being in the right place at the right time, knowing people in the game already, randomly getting into a good galaxy, being confident to go out and find the opportunities.
Not much to say here apart from I liked the whole backstory idea
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Unread 27 Oct 2003, 16:25   #4
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Re: improving the gaming experience not the game mechanics.

In line with enhancing the experience...

I dont think this is easy to do; but I've always wanted to see what my fleet looked like, instead of some numbers. A planet with a lot of gendered pictures for ships would be neat. In line with this; some animated battle reports. I am happy seeing triangles and squares giving each other a hard time. Games like droidarena have shown this is possible. I know planetarion is of quite a different scale but maybe things like drawing squadrons would work.
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Unread 27 Oct 2003, 16:46   #5
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Re: improving the gaming experience not the game mechanics.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Killerbij
In line with enhancing the experience...

I dont think this is easy to do; but I've always wanted to see what my fleet looked like, instead of some numbers. A planet with a lot of gendered pictures for ships would be neat. In line with this; some animated battle reports. I am happy seeing triangles and squares giving each other a hard time. Games like droidarena have shown this is possible. I know planetarion is of quite a different scale but maybe things like drawing squadrons would work.
Do you really think thats worthwhile though. I mean while a image showing how the battkle went might be amusing at first youd soon grow tired of it. The mention of seeing the battle as Squares and triangles remindeds me of the 2d pitch you can have on Championship manager 4 and It would be useful in PA IF we could make change to our battle tactics during the fight (after all in CM4 when playing a match this is where the 2d engine is really useful) but as a browser game i dont see how its possible to pull off such a use like that.

HOWEVER i can see a use for images, ship names could all be hyperlinked and clicking would load a new window showing a 3d image that roatates around showing all side sof the ship and below would be all its stats nicely presented.
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Unread 27 Oct 2003, 16:57   #6
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Re: improving the gaming experience not the game mechanics.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wakey
Do you really think thats worthwhile though. I mean while a image showing how the battkle went might be amusing at first youd soon grow tired of it. The mention of seeing the battle as Squares and triangles remindeds me of the 2d pitch you can have on Championship manager 4 and It would be useful in PA IF we could make change to our battle tactics during the fight (after all in CM4 when playing a match this is where the 2d engine is really useful) but as a browser game i dont see how its possible to pull off such a use like that.
I always enjoyed the battle reports in droid arena; they were always different due to the ability to program your droid (kind alike priorities nowadays) Maybe the priorities idea should be enhanced giving you the ability to target certain ship classes more than others. Or sacrificing damage and armor for initiative. That way combat would be a whole lot different each time and so would the combat reports be. I can imagine groups of battleships and fighters being represented by 1 symbol with certain hp and damage. But you would need to be able to give specific ship orders to ship type groups. (Maybe have a fleet devided into several strikegroups). Problem is this system may enhance the combat a lot it also makes it very complicated and less accessible to n00bs. However like in droidarena preset strikegroups could be the answer there, each having specific shiptypes and orders. Costumisable after certain amounts of research are done.
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Unread 27 Oct 2003, 18:11   #7
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Re: improving the gaming experience not the game mechanics.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wakey
Interesting idea although I think the wording might need changed, after all 'Age' seems a little medieval or fantasy based rather than that of the sci-fi genre
hmm cant think of anything better tho.
I freely admit to be better at having ideas than describing them.


Quote:
Originally Posted by wakey
I could go on and list 30+ separate incidents including F-Crew where there?s been a public disagreement either on forums or on IRC and that's just one alliance who hasn?t been a threat and hasn?t done much but to try and survive day by day since r4 so imagine how many alliance like Fury, legion ect would have disagreements on. Now which side do you go onto believe and take down as history?
I was thinking less detailed than specific Incidents but i take your point. It's still a shame some sort of more or less true history doesnt/cant exist.


Quote:
those involved and to do this automatically wouldn?t be the most simple thing to organise and as such is was deemed too difficult to implement without adding to the game.

Now if someone can come up with a way for it to work I?m sure it might get listened to again but until then its something that's a none starter.
The added alliance stuff goes someway to helping. I agree different planets in news everyday is not much interest but I for one would really be interested in who's attacking who alliancewise. Mit should be able to add some of his pa tools functionality to the back-end to indicate alliance fleet movements and alliance gains/losses and then you just need someone to take figures and make it into news. Perhaps it could be weekly news. then alliances could be asked to comment on the facts of the previous week. it's an added dimension to the game experience and enables alliances to create a public image by how they explain the things that have happened. couple that with
the good, neutral, evil idea. There is a role to be played....roleplaying. It doesnt have to revolve around big alliances all the time either. if a small alliance jumps ten places up the table, we want to know why. Plus stats like universe roid growth, ships in universe, roid movements etc. All these things exist within the game. They just need gathering by pa team.


Quote:
tbh I'm having a little trouble understanding this point. Are you saying we would choose a job type (Soldiers, Scientists ect) and then come up with our own race name rather than a planet name?
that's exactly what i'm saying. It just makes more sense to me. And it allows future development to look at strengthening aspects of job types and promotes continuity through rounds.
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Unread 27 Oct 2003, 19:05   #8
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Re: improving the gaming experience not the game mechanics.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Browolf
hmm cant think of anything better tho.
I freely admit to be better at having ideas than describing them.
Neither can I but it just doesnt seem to sit right I'm sure someone out there can be creative enough to come up with their own term that sounds right or pick up some sci-fi term that would work though


Quote:
Originally Posted by Browolf
The added alliance stuff goes someway to helping. I agree different planets in news everyday is not much interest but I for one would really be interested in who's attacking who alliancewise. Mit should be able to add some of his pa tools functionality to the back-end to indicate alliance fleet movements and alliance gains/losses and then you just need someone to take figures and make it into news. Perhaps it could be weekly news. then alliances could be asked to comment on the facts of the previous week. it's an added dimension to the game experience and enables alliances to create a public image by how they explain the things that have happened. couple that with
the good, neutral, evil idea. There is a role to be played....roleplaying. It doesnt have to revolve around big alliances all the time either. if a small alliance jumps ten places up the table, we want to know why. Plus stats like universe roid growth, ships in universe, roid movements etc. All these things exist within the game. They just need gathering by pa team.
While reading this reply a major problem just struck me. An alliance takes part in a random strike against a planet, the news then identifies that planets alliance. Now the attackers have the co-ords of an enemy admittedly attacking one planet from an alliance probally wouldnt be enough to trigger the news item but this brings me to another problem, in a random universe would it ever be triggered, alliances generally dont just target the members of an alliance they are at war with, they will pick one or more of their galaxies and take them all out no matter what alliance they are this surely wouldnt trigger a news item (unless you have a news item about an alliance roiding a galaxy)

Quote:
Originally Posted by Browolf
that's exactly what i'm saying. It just makes more sense to me. And it allows future development to look at strengthening aspects of job types and promotes continuity through rounds.
Arent we going to end up with a bunch of rubbish sounding races though, tbh id perfer its kept at planet name. However we could combine the current way and your idea to enchance the game a little more. With many MMPORPG's you not only choose a race but also things like profession, doing simerlar in PA would make everyone just a little more diverse as they would go together to deide your playing style. For example the race could decide which ships (with the ships being pre PAX type ships with proper differneces) you have access to, your profession would decide what Research, Contruction and cov op bonus/hanicaps you have. You could even take it a step further and have a civ type setting where you choose your governing stance which would effect your production rate, resource gathering rate and fighting ability. It would certainly make us more individual and its the creating of our charchter part that I person find good about MMPORPG's as I can creat a charchter that fine tuned to how i wish to playand which is as unique as it can be.

Ofc it might actually be impossible to balance with so many factors
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Unread 27 Oct 2003, 22:56   #9
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Re: improving the gaming experience not the game mechanics.

there are definately some good ideas coming through.

timeline - not sure about. cos PA is like a 'repeating' event - Ground Hog day type of thing.

history - if alliances want history, we can add that for them, if they can come to uswith the info we can make a page on the portal

the News... I remember that from a while ago, it would ofc have to be vauge enough to hide any person in particular but at the same time give a fun account of whats going on.

Races - I feel we should go back to races 'how they were' with the diff types of fleets (clocked emp steal and fighters)

Comments?
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Unread 27 Oct 2003, 23:07   #10
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Re: improving the gaming experience not the game mechanics.

The News idea can be fairly easily worked. Although just pumping out stats re: 'big battles' or patterns of activity between alliances wouldn't be overly attractive to look at, it would be fairly easy for a human to interpret (and find the interesting ones of the bunch). Then it'd just be a case of having a 'News Room' of a few literate volunteers who know what they're looking at.

But that wouldn't be very varied as Wakey suggested. So, perhaps having alliances nominate members that are the equivalent of political Press Secretaries who could submit news to the News Room in conjunction with the reports that could be automatically generated, it'd provide more material and quotes for a small newspaper. And better still it'd perhaps create a more subtle inter-alliance dynamic with spreading propaganda (hello Mr. Information Minister of Iraq), an increase in inter-alliance spying (ah the good old days \o/ ) and eventually form an actual history over rounds as opposed to the random storylines that have been engineered before now.

An rough, easily implementable idea.
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Unread 27 Oct 2003, 23:23   #11
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Re: improving the gaming experience not the game mechanics.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mit
Races - I feel we should go back to races 'how they were' with the diff types of fleets (clocked emp steal and fighters)

Comments?
I wouldnt mind the old races back; the return of ship-based initiative would be a shame though. I think there is a great opportunity to enhance the combat with the introduction of more tactics while still retaining abilities like cloak, emp, steal. What I would like (and I gave a small (not that well explained) glimpse at earlier this thread) is the ability to split your fleet into say 3 strikegroups. Each with different orders.

Strikegroup One could for instance be set to have a high initiative at the cost of accuracy and damage. (A Zikonian Player could put their Steal ships in this group and set the setting accordingly as could Cathaar the emp (the only ships that should still retain initiative advantage in a initiative group*)

Strikegroup Two could go for maximum damage but would fire last (Players could put battleships in these but I can imagine you might want to make different groups (and settings) based on your targets defenses)

Strikegroup Three would for example go for the roids and thus be in the middle initiative group (I think any ship should retain the roidcap capability)

*Combat would thus have 3 initiative groups. All ships in a fleet can be put in one of these groups (or all in the same group) via the tactics and the ships in a group can be changed. It would allow for some very interesting combat and allow the old abilities to return without the disadvantage of returning the old initiatives (Which encouraged bashing a great deal) Basically this is the current priorities idea but costumisable by the player for shipgroups.

On the Missions screen an example would be:

Fleet 1
Squadron 1:
Battleshipname 100
Fightername 5000 Priorities Maximum Kill (Initiative 3)
Squadron 2:
Frigatename 200
Frigatename 200 Priorities Roids (Initiative 2)
Squadron 3:
Cruisername 225 Priorities Initiative (Initiative 1)

However the same fleet (for now in the same squadrons) could also be configured:
Fleet 1
Squadron 1:
Battleshipname 100
Fightername 5000 Priorities Roids (Initiative 2)
Squadron 2:
Frigatename 200
Frigatename 200 Priorities Roids (Initiative 2)
Squadron 3:
Cruisername 225 Priorities Initiative (Initiative 1)

Using 2 squadrons for the same setting isnt that usefull though so if a player wanted maximum kill he could add ships. (Moving ships from squadron 2 to squadron 1 and adding ships to squadron 2

Fleet 1
Squadron 1:
Battleshipname 100
Fightername 5000
Frigatename 200
Frigatename 200 Priorities Roids (Initiative 2)
Squadron 2:
Battleship 500
Frigatename 200 Priorities Maximum Kill (Initiative 3)
Squadron 3:
Cruisername 225 Priorities Initiative (Initiative 1)

I think this would allow the use of the old shiptypes without the return of ship-based initiative and also enhancing combat to a higher level.

Then again I could be missing some issues... discuss
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Unread 28 Oct 2003, 02:06   #12
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Re: improving the gaming experience not the game mechanics.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mit
there are definately some good ideas coming through.

timeline - not sure about. cos PA is like a 'repeating' event - Ground Hog day type of thing.
It certainly is atm, but it doesnt need to be. There are benefits to be had from non-repetition.


Quote:
Originally Posted by pablissimo
And better still it'd perhaps create a more subtle inter-alliance dynamic with spreading propaganda (hello Mr. Information Minister of Iraq), an increase in inter-alliance spying (ah the good old days \o/ ) and eventually form an actual history over rounds as opposed to the random storylines that have been engineered before now.
that's what i imagined but couldnt express it.
I had in mind the dynamics between Londo Molari and J'Kar in Babylon 5
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Unread 28 Oct 2003, 14:04   #13
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Question Communications And Allies

When you look at your own Gal, you can see who is on and who is not. this is great. You go to your best mate's gal to see if he is on - but you cant see that. So what I think would be a good Idea is to have a 'Personal Allies' page - Like a galaxy but a shortlist of all those who you have chosen as Personal Allies. Also - to send them messages you can just click on their names like on galaxies.

To add somebody to your Personal Allies page you can send them a request which appears at the top of your screen as a message, if the request is granted they get added to your allies page. That way you can take a quick glance at this list to see who is on.

This, in effect, might be better than IRC,which, lets face it in its entirety, is not used by the majority or players. This lack of availability to all users (work/college/school etc users) is what makes a lot of PA unplayable - the fact that evrywhere you go poeple are like "oooh, be on IRC - you cant play properly otherwise" and "you cant be in my alliance unless you're active on IRC". This isolates a lot of players who could easily enjoy the game.

Just a thought...
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Unread 28 Oct 2003, 14:40   #14
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Re: Communications And Allies

Quote:
Originally Posted by Churchil5
When you look at your own Gal, you can see who is on and who is not. this is great. You go to your best mate's gal to see if he is on - but you cant see that. So what I think would be a good Idea is to have a 'Personal Allies' page - Like a galaxy but a shortlist of all those who you have chosen as Personal Allies. Also - to send them messages you can just click on their names like on galaxies</snip>
Bascially a 'buddies list' type of thing? Like the forums have?
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Unread 28 Oct 2003, 14:45   #15
Churchil5
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Re: improving the gaming experience not the game mechanics.

Aye - pretty much. I started my own thread on this as to attract as much attention to this idea as possible - feel free to comment on it under "Allies and Communications" (or some similar title - cant remember it exactly)
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Unread 28 Oct 2003, 15:24   #16
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Re: improving the gaming experience not the game mechanics.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wakey
While reading this reply a major problem just struck me. An alliance takes part in a random strike against a planet, the news then identifies that planets alliance. Now the attackers have the co-ords of an enemy admittedly attacking one planet from an alliance probally wouldnt be enough to trigger the news item but this brings me to another problem, in a random universe would it ever be triggered, alliances generally dont just target the members of an alliance they are at war with, they will pick one or more of their galaxies and take them all out no matter what alliance they are this surely wouldnt trigger a news item (unless you have a news item about an alliance roiding a galaxy)
Now.. Alliance news... here is an idea with potential.

1. As long as the rules/guidelines for what becomes posted are open and readable, any information gained becomes more of a sleazy tactic / feature rather than exploiting a bug atleast.

2. Designing an automatic systen for newsreporting would be difficult, but i'm fairly sure a good coder could come up with a good solution.

3. Now; to get some flesh in this feature, rather than dry fact reporting; The hc's of the relevant alliances should be allowed to comment on the news. Give each involved party access to a one-liner sentence, which may link to a longer text if wanted.. Have a delay of 8 hours or so in the news reporting allowing them to comment (comments should also be allowed to inserted after that time also ofc)

4. As in the real world, journalists can't report on stuff they don't know about. An option would be to include a 'report battle' functioanilty in the battlereports, where the battlereport is sent to the "journalist", which makes an automatic choices of what to generate.
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