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Unread 22 Oct 2003, 00:48   #1
Salomo
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A reason why PA started to die?

As anyone can see in my sig, i played planetarion for a long time. Now i play a different browser based online game that is quite similar to PA in many regards (not a clone though) in a kingdom (the equivalent to the galaxy) that is quite strong and quite high in one of the rankings.

Today someone within range of all our provinces (equivalent to planets) from a kingdom much much smaller than ours attacked us and our king (rather equal to GC) posted the message he sent him... basically he told him that attacking us once is perfectly in order, but that he shouldn't come back for seconds or he would get a beating....

... somehow that reminded me of planetarion. Not because you would also see such messages here (at least not while i played) but because you wouldn't. Admittedly there is a difference between 1 person attacking another one (which is rather impossible in planetarion) and there being a whole wave of attacks, but even back in the days when this was still more possible as far as i can recall such messages were rare. Instead people would seek to retaliate allready the first attack, if they could pull it off with twice as many waves, just to create a fear factor, to make sure people think twice about attacking them. And if a target did not defend in that way it was an easy target and got aditional attacks on it, making those that played nicely fail.

I don't want to go into detail and try to show how this somehow evolved and got worse and worse and made people quit and made it harder for new people to join, but rather focus on the main aspect of this little story: Eventhough my king could have just ordered the attacker to be killed, he didn't but instead applied the old rule "do onto others as you want done onto you", realising that he once was like this dude in the small kingdom as well and accepting that atack as part of the game. In planetarion that kind of spirit somehow got lost in the bitterness and fierceness of fighting.

just felt like posting that, dunno why
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Unread 22 Oct 2003, 00:57   #2
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Re: A reason why PA started to die?

I'd probably appreciate this more if my 170k planet (and dropping) wasn't under consecutive 5000 ship attacks heh.

Without drawing any unfounded conclusions I was wondering whether the political situation in the game you're playing has reached the complexity or high level of achievement that it has in Planetarion. People always took the game very seriously, there being both good points and bad points to this. Of course it'd be nice to have the best of both worlds but unfortunately nobody ever seems to do that.
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Unread 22 Oct 2003, 09:34   #3
Salomo
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Re: A reason why PA started to die?

Quote:
Originally Posted by JonnyBGood
I'd probably appreciate this more if my 170k planet (and dropping) wasn't under consecutive 5000 ship attacks heh.

Without drawing any unfounded conclusions I was wondering whether the political situation in the game you're playing has reached the complexity or high level of achievement that it has in Planetarion. People always took the game very seriously, there being both good points and bad points to this. Of course it'd be nice to have the best of both worlds but unfortunately nobody ever seems to do that.

no, politically it's not as complex. Politics actually is even more part of the game as you get in-game benefits and detriments for declaring war on someone, which then creates special in-game relationsbetween your kingdom (galaxy) and the other one (sort of like a jumpgate on a far far more developed level), so the room for development of politics is there. However, "honour" (or respect for others) plays a far larger role so the component of betrayal and deceit plays a far smaller role (it took 4 rounds of that game before i encountered the first spy and real betrayal) and alliances there aren't really worth the name alliance compared to planetarion alliances (most basically only intervene when someone breaks the self-made honour-rules against one of their members, and even then not allways).

so basically there is politics, but it's less developed and therefore on one hand less fun but also less frustrating and devastating... and if there's something i miss about planetarion it's probably that machiavellian nature of politics here, eventhough i'm at the same time glad not having to deal with that stuff in my new game (makes playing a lot more comfortable when you don't need to be paranoid).:-/


... which now brings me to the conclusion that creators should put more focus on the diplomatic aspect of planetarion in their short introduction on the main page, as that's what really made PA different from all the other games i played.
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If you want to survive in a world of wolves you have to be a wolf. If you want to change a world of wolves you need to be a lamb

r1: n00b
r2: 7:11 - T7C HC, WaC(Jr), Sedition HC
r3: 31:25 - Sedition, Century, SL HC
r4: 95:21 - BlueTubas'
r5: 30:5 - BlueTubas, VtS
r6: 33:24:1 - Deus Ex Machina HC, politically retired
r7: 38:22 -> 26:11 - RaH peon
r8: 12:3:4 - Defended by 1:1
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Unread 22 Oct 2003, 09:41   #4
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Re: A reason why PA started to die?

some diplomatic features would be interesting
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Unread 22 Oct 2003, 09:46   #5
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Re: A reason why PA started to die?

Fire a proposal my way, and I'll add it to my ever growing list of community input. email is in my signature.
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Unread 22 Oct 2003, 09:49   #6
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Re: A reason why PA started to die?

What I hate in this game is cowards threatening to reatal the defenders of their targets. That's for sure a way to lower the interest of the small to medicore players that cannot count on massive alliance protection.
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Unread 22 Oct 2003, 10:21   #7
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Re: A reason why PA started to die?

PA died because certain morons didnt like thiefs
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Unread 22 Oct 2003, 21:21   #8
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Re: A reason why PA started to die?

Seconded.
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Unread 22 Oct 2003, 22:09   #9
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Re: A reason why PA started to die?

PA died because of the prices, and all the community does is moan / blame the creators
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Unread 22 Oct 2003, 22:40   #10
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Exclamation Re: A reason why PA started to die?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Illogical
PA died because of the prices, and all the community does is moan / blame the creators
True; but then it was the creators who introduced the prices in the first place and then lost much of the money due to bad business decisions.
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Unread 22 Oct 2003, 23:09   #11
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Re: A reason why PA started to die?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tactitus
True; but then it was the creators who introduced the prices in the first place and then lost much of the money due to bad business decisions.
I don't think anything in the game itself had to do with it. People will play the game anyway no matter the circumstances. If the old people don't like it, the new people will. The problem was that there were no new people. Old people left, hardly any new people came in. This was mainly due to the lack of a decent free trial / game introduction and ofcourse the prices which were too high.

Why were prices too high? Because planetarion lost 30,000 dollars in the first round they went p2p. They had 23k paying accounts (though it was 2 for the price of 1 then) and because of CC fraude they had to return 30k to the credit card companies in addition to getting a bad rating with them which would cost them more in future rounds.

Thats 30,000 they could have used on advertising the game, keeping the prices lower next round, adding a payed staff member. It went wrong from the start and because they couldn't afford any big cuts (they had to support themselves and their families from the income) it simply dwindled.

If there was a bad business decision it was the lack of a decent fraud detection system. They worked it out in the end though, but obviously, thats a bit too late.
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Unread 23 Oct 2003, 17:49   #12
Tactitus
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Exclamation Re: A reason why PA started to die?

Quote:
Originally Posted by ParraCida
If there was a bad business decision it was the lack of a decent fraud detection system. They worked it out in the end though, but obviously, thats a bit too late.
Obviously.

But their n00b approach to the world of credit card transactions was hardly their only bad business decision. They were always top-heavy with salaried staff (given their meager revenue), the Slammer fiasco, their goofy pricing schemes (which didn't help bring in (m)any new customers but did cannibalize their revenue), etc.
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