Hostile fleets # of galm8s showing in overview!!

[Jackal2112]

Why oh WHY?????

Did Spinner and CO make ANOTHER change to the game.

a- midround, when people are using tactics according to game setup
b- without even a *NOTICE* to the PAYING community about this

It is about time that you unreliable folks STOP DOING this kind of things. Don't you even for a second realise that by changing/adding 'stuff' during a round you mess it up for people? How is my big fi fleet going to land now that galaxy mates have it 10x easier to see I am sending fi fleet?? Why oh why can you guys not --->1<--- time make a change to the game and TELL PEOPLE in front, or at least, DO IT AFTER the round is over.

This is how you lose paying customers. I am quitting.

Goodbye PA, goodbye ignorant creators!!

(I could live playing a game with ignorant GM's like you, but this kind of s**t is just affecting the game too much! All i see is complaints about you people not ever listening to the community.. and you keep on makeing the same mistakes now for what.. about 3-4 years? Find a clue, in gods name)

[Eventh]

Originally posted by Jackal2112
b- without even a *NOTICE* to the PAYING community about this

this is the worst part.. i think its good to see how many hostiles they got.. will make defence much easier, since defence has been hard this round..

wtf are you thinking when you make changes to the game without letting us know about it???

[Jackal2112]

Yes and defense being hard this round, made this round fun for me. Maybe not for the whiners who quit after losing 5 roids, but definitely for me. This change is making a BIG impact on the round. Thank you creators, a 'wise' decision, as usual... now as usual, this game is going to be more about defending than about attacking. BAH!

[Lockhead]

I like the change.

Jackal stop whining. Thanks.

[Kal]

I don;t like the change - a few reasons:

Before the change BCs needed some skill to cover calls, now they can eaily guess the fleet and calc it. Had i known this change was going to be amde I would NOT have made a bcalc.

I liked attacking being easy and defence being hard, it starts to show which alliances are really good - i.e. thoose that mange to keep their memebrs on at night.

And finally there was no consultation and no announcement etc

[Ruler]

Originally posted by Lockhead
I like the change.

Jackal stop whining. Thanks.

[Tomkat]

Originally posted by Lockhead
I like the change.

Jackal stop whining. Thanks.

[Twist]

oiii a new change....well they do that since r2....when they changed thiefs and crippled them.
and they still dont get they piss off players...and now as it is a payed game...its like

"sorry sir....we decided it would save use some cost...so you have to deal with only 3 wheels on your new 4wd car....sir...no you wont have any problems to drive...promised"

fu spinner&co

[Yan-Je]

Originally posted by Jackal2112
Why oh WHY?????

Did Spinner and CO make ANOTHER change to the game.

a- midround, when people are using tactics according to game setup
b- without even a *NOTICE* to the PAYING community about this

It is about time that you unreliable folks STOP DOING this kind of things. Don't you even for a second realise that by changing/adding 'stuff' during a round you mess it up for people? How is my big fi fleet going to land now that galaxy mates have it 10x easier to see I am sending fi fleet?? Why oh why can you guys not --->1<--- time make a change to the game and TELL PEOPLE in front, or at least, DO IT AFTER the round is over.

This is how you lose paying customers. I am quitting.

Goodbye PA, goodbye ignorant creators!!

(I could live playing a game with ignorant GM's like you, but this kind of s**t is just affecting the game too much! All i see is complaints about you people not ever listening to the community.. and you keep on makeing the same mistakes now for what.. about 3-4 years? Find a clue, in gods name)

Well, just to let you know. This isnt a recent change, it has been the same since the start of the beta. And this has not been changed since the start of this round so i dunno what you are talking about a change in mid-round.

Also, i myself dun like this idea either. but i disagree with you saying its 'witout' notification. if you have read the manual at the start to see what overview displays, u'd have known. Some changes takes some getting used to and adaptation, but u gotta live with it i guess. And i believe everytime they make an influential change to the game, it'll be displayed either in announcements or in the message of the day on ur overview.

Well, GL with the round.

[General Martok]

only change I see is the number of incomings on my galmates, spinner. So.....

Originally posted by Lockhead
I like the change.

Jackal stop whining. Thanks.

[Illegal E]

whether or not the change is for the good is irrelevant, it is the concept of just slamming a change like that into a game we've paid for without any warning whatsoever that peeves people off. It's like playing a game of pinball, and somewhere halfway this mechanic comes in, removes one of the balls, and leaves you there to find out getting multiball means 2 balls instead of 3 now. The only difference is that this game of pinball lasts a couple of months...

[Killerbij]

I dun like it; it takes away the strategy of sending fake fleets and encourages bashing AGAIN . Just when you could roid some1 with just 50 battleships without ruining their entire round you need to send killfleets again to scare away potential ingal defenders. Sad

[AndroX]

is it really about liking it or not liking it?
We have payed from things that werent there in the beginning.
People signed up with Planetarion because they have seen it in beta, and knew there were small things yet to be changed.

This is rather far from small, things like this have a big impact in
game strategy's from people that now again stop attacking and only focus on defence.

Ah well... I agree to Jackal2112's post.
Its the main problem that its been put into the game without talking to the community about it first. Or a thread on the forums where all could answer ... perhaps even a little poll would do already.

And Im quite aware there are already people stopping to play ( at least in an offence way) planetarion because of this.

Im not quite fond of it meself, and yes it needed some defence skills from Alliances, or people that are not in an alliance.
We'll see howlong it will be inhere, or that they remove it during
the round without notifying again...

All is possible ... you know PA crew

[Hurragutten]

As I see this the problem isn't if you like the change or not. Some will like it and some will not like it.

The problem is we weren't told and that's ignorant of the PA-team.

[Obliterate]

Now I can't send smaller fake attacks to scare away gal attackers.

I didn't even know about this until I read this thread - an announcement (on the forums - /me looks at the unused announcement forum) would have been nice!

[JC]

Originally posted by Obliterate

I didn't even know about this until I read this thread - an announcement (on the forums - /me looks at the unused announcement forum) would have been nice!

[Makhil]

Problem is, this feature is not an improvement (though some may like it, others won't) it changes the way you have to play the game therefore it shouldn't be brought into the game in mid round. Just make a list of all the possible changes and test them in the next beta. Why not keeping a small beta running to test these ideas ?

[Al_zz]

Bah, we needed other things changed more than number of incomings on the gal overview.

Lack of announcement is frustrating as now I did not know my fleetsize showed up on overview of others galmembers in my last attack a few hours ago. Could be the reason I lost more ships !!!

VERY ANOYING !!!

hAl

[Terminator2003]

I am afraid they made this change for the 'newbees' and the lesser skilled alliances that have problems with covering their incomings at the moment. Like someone else above posted, it takes a little bit of skill to succesfully DC incoming, especially if your member is offline and you don't know the # of incoming. This change to the game is a bad call and I honestly don't believe why certain 'elite' alliance HC would support making the game duller and easier with such a change.

The fact this change was done midround, without notice, is just adding to the frustration.

Spinner, are you reading this?

[BlueArmy]

damn your one of the worst whiners i've ever seen.. whatever happens u are one of the first to whine about it on the forum...
the game is a war game, attacking AND defending... with the auto launching attacking is too easy and defending too hard...

[Terminator2003]

Originally posted by BlueArmy
damn your one of the worst whiners i've ever seen.. whatever happens u are one of the first to whine about it on the forum...
the game is a war game, attacking AND defending... with the auto launching attacking is too easy and defending too hard...

like you said, it is a wargame. so don't 'whine' about defending being too hard. skill and activity is what that requires. Now, just imagine what happens if a change happens tomorrow, which makes defending even harder. Would you just agree with it? Or come on here complaining how unfair it is?

It is quite easy coming on here and pretending to be cool and calling other people 'whiners'. Instead, try to think about the issue and the fact a lot of people have a serious problem with the way changes are implemented. Then, if you have thought about it and have something useful to say, come back. Thank you.

[zenopus]

Originally posted by Jackal2112
Why oh WHY?

It was encouraging account sharing?

Originally posted by Lockhead
I like the change.

Jackal stop whining. Thanks.

TBH, I didn't even realise I could not see the numbers of my gal-mates incoming until a few days ago.
The change is not going to make much difference to how I play.

Originally posted by Terminator2003
Now, just imagine what happens if a change happens tomorrow, which makes defending even harder. Would you just agree with it?

That does not make sense. How can people agree to an unspecified hypothetical change?

[Jackal2112]

Originally posted by zenopus
That does not make sense. How can people agree to an unspecified hypothetical change?

It is not hypothetical. That is why it happened 2 days ago.

[Jonas]

Whatever he does, its wrong?

I think it was a good move, a little notice wouldnt hurt tho.

I have a complain about when you removed salvage for killed attacking ships!! I had TEH incomming back then and had more def, and would have gotten loads :P

t00t t00t

[Stifler]

Originally posted by Lockhead
I like the change.

Jackal stop whining. Thanks.

[zenopus]

Originally posted by Terminator2003
Now, just imagine ...

Originally posted by Jackal2112
It is not hypothetical.

lol

[Ado]

Originally posted by Jonas
Whatever he does, its wrong?

I think it was a good move, a little notice wouldnt hurt tho.

I have a complain about when you removed salvage for killed attacking ships!! I had TEH incomming back then and had more def, and would have gotten loads :P

t00t t00t

I would have to say YES... not because of the fact that there are conflicting opinions in PA but because of his complete lack of consideration. He has just changed somthing that completly changes the tactics of the game without so much as a post. If the game were free it would be bad enough, the fact that it costs means this is just inexcusable.

Why are we plagued to have a creator with a COMPLETE LACK of social and communication skills.

go play www.********.net , yes I will prolly get banned for this but you know.. i couldnt give a damn. Spinner you are an IDIOT plain and simple, your not fit to run a candy store.

[Ado]

Originally posted by Terminator2003
like you said, it is a wargame. so don't 'whine' about defending being too hard. skill and activity is what that requires. Now, just imagine what happens if a change happens tomorrow, which makes defending even harder. Would you just agree with it? Or come on here complaining how unfair it is?

It is quite easy coming on here and pretending to be cool and calling other people 'whiners'. Instead, try to think about the issue and the fact a lot of people have a serious problem with the way changes are implemented. Then, if you have thought about it and have something useful to say, come back. Thank you.

It ok BA has whined lots of times when his fleet has been raped through "no fault of his own" perhaps its because the number of people whos bluffs have been caught and their fleets raped arnt related to him that he doesnt give a fk.

[LaNiCoR]

I have to say i agree, changing stuff mid round with no notice to the players is bad. And add to that the fact that people are paying a fair bit per planet I think they deserve to be told in fact they have PAID for the right to be told.

LaNiCoR

[Killerbij]

Originally posted by Ado


Why are we plagued to have a creator with a COMPLETE LACK of social and communication skills.

Only nerds make computer games; most companies that do well at selling got a big marketing team to listen to their costumer's needs. Does the crew even have someone doing this? Or is this all a job for Jolt. Something they havent been doing too well (if at all) lately

[Leshy]

As far as I know, the marketing is up to Jolt as they are the owners of Planetarion.

[Jackal2112]

It is just worrying Spinner doesn't take even 10 minutes every day to scroll through the new forum posts and read peoples ideas and complaints. At least someone should be doing this to point out any big complaints or issues arising from what they are doing. There is no way that players can give proper feedback. If you email them, you don't even get a response. They don't read AD/PD, they don't respond to in game messages.

This is the main problem, customer service and communication.. I just can not believe this game is being made for the players any longer.. they have nothing to say!

[Jackal2112]

I would also like to point to a possible bug due to the change made. My galmate has incoming which show up both in his news entry and in the overview.

"We have detected an open jumpgate from .... , located at x:y:z. The fleet will
approach our system in tick 438 and appears to have roughly 500 ships."

In the overview however a different number of ships is displayed:

... ............ x:y:z x:y:z (5) Attack -- -- 1000



So the 'change' that has been made, actually seems to nullifiy the surprise effect of the Zirkonian race. At least that is what it looks like. So other then adding more predictability to the game, to me it seems at least a bug has been added and a feature taken away from those playing the Zik race.

[Leshy]

Originally posted by Jackal2112
At least someone should be doing this to point out any big complaints or issues arising from what they are doing.

Hi.

[Jackal2112]

Leshy, somehow I don't envy your job. But glad you are doing it.

[Jonas]

Originally posted by Jackal2112
It is just worrying Spinner doesn't take even 10 minutes every day to scroll through the new forum posts and read peoples ideas and complaints. At least someone should be doing this to point out any big complaints or issues arising from what they are doing. There is no way that players can give proper feedback. If you email them, you don't even get a response. They don't read AD/PD, they don't respond to in game messages.

This is the main problem, customer service and communication.. I just can not believe this game is being made for the players any longer.. they have nothing to say!

THat would take alot more than 10 minutes...

and we dont know wether he does it or not?

[Leshy]

Originally posted by Jonas
and we dont know wether he does it or not?

The mod reps were brought in in order to reduce the necessity for the rest of the team to spend a lot of time on the forums. Any issues that need the attention of either Creators, Multihunters, Forum Admins or Portal Admins can be relayed to them directly by us (Aryn is the mod rep for AD) so that they can reply and/or act upon it if needed.

Having said that, there have been occasions where Spinner posted in threads before I got to notify him of their existence, so I know he does keep an eye on the forums.

[Jackal2112]

Hmm did we lose some posts to this thread? Argh..?!?!

[Leshy]

Originally Posted by Jackal2112

Hmm did we lose some posts to this thread? Argh..?!?!

A database dump was made two evenings before the new forums were put up live, so roughly all posts from the last 36 hours or so were unfortunately lost.

Let me repost the posts from this thread that were lost (I can still access the old forums for this sort of purpose).

[Leshy]

Originally Posted by Ado

And the pa "crews" new reason why pa is failing is "blah blah jolt blah". Passing the buck is the lamest way of damage control and one thats employed within so many companys.

And since when have jolt owned PA ? dont simtech own pa who paid jolt to host it.. or are the pa crew letting some info out we dont know </sarcasm>

[Leshy]

Originally Posted by Hurragutten

I agree with you!

But I would like to add that paying or not: We should be notified about changes that affects the game play.

As we see from this tread people are frustrated about this. Frustrated players will more easily leave the game and the playerbase will be even smaller.

It's always harder to get people to recomend a game than to talk bad about it. Changing gameplay without notifying will make people talk bad about it, and recruitment will be harder.

THis way: Changing gameplay without notifying is another nail in the coffin for PA. I wish it wasn't, but I'm affraid it is.

[Leshy]

Originally Posted by Gawain

well i like seeing the amount of attacking ships of my gall m8tes
but i agree they should have given out a notice to people
so that people could change their ways now people might have launched thinking they can land their fleets without having to worry about defence
now those same people might see their fleets massacred because halfway between their launch and landing everything is changed
so a 2 weeks notice should be enopugh for people to have seen the changes.
and also put it in the game overview since not everybody visits these forums all the time.

[Leshy]

Originally Posted by Leshy

Unless you're saying that the price increase for Round 10 has actually been beneficial and that somehow the company owning the game isn't supposed to take care of the marketing for it, please stop talking crap, thank you.

SimTech being the company owning PA is more a formal technicality, imho, though you can have this point if you insist.

[Leshy]

Originally Posted by Ado

No Leshy what I am saying is that there have been many increases in the price of a round of PA and only the most recent can be attributed to "jolt". The issues at its most basic comes down to this... p2p = less numbers, less numbers = less fun game, less fun game + spinners lack of new features to keep people here = less numbers, less numbers = the need for higher prices. Its a catch 22 situation thats resulted from bad management and game design nothing more nothing less.

My comment regarding simtech was somewhat toung in cheek as we all know simtech are a "cushion" company designed to sheidl jolt from any unpleasentness when pa fails.

I understand you have to be seen to rub spinners ego but we both know deep down that PAX is a shadow of what it was supposed to be, a shadow of old PA, everyone KNOWS this, the proof will show itelf in a month or two (maybe less) when jolt shut up shop.

If some innovative payment / marketing campaings were used while PA was independant of jolt rather than rely on word of mouth the player base would be bigger and there would be less need for a price hike.. this much is NOT jolts fault and the ball rests VERY much in spinners court.

[Leshy]

Originally Posted by Leshy

The most recent also being the most drastical one, disregarding the dropping of one free account with one paid account thing, which I wasn't a fan of either. In addition, this price increase came together with a new game, giving even existing players less of an incentive to pay, especially as many people dismiss change as something bad on beforehand.

I'm not claiming that PaX is the ultimate game, or that Spinner has never made any wrong decisions. However, not everyone disagreeing with you does so out of some kind of need to 'rub Spinners ego', as I've disagreed on certain issues with him enough times. In this case, I personally like PaX quite a lot, even though it's in my opinion not (yet) what it could be. Not surprising if you reckon it took old PA 3 years to reach it's final stage.

As for the management over time - hindsight is 20/20 and especially easy if you're not the one having been making the calls. The Creators have made decisions over the history of PA - some of which were good, some of which were not. Obviously PaX has not been the success that it was meant to be, due to a combination of factors, not all of which were Spinner.

If I had won 20 million in the lottery, I'd have bought PA and made it free for the next 80 years. And if Roman Abramovich had bought PA instead of Chelsea, he'd have paid Nodrog, Moridin, Grendel and Syn_Sid to play the game. And if... well, you get the point.

I wasn't a part of 5th Season when they had to make the calls regarding payment, so I can't judge. I know most of the Creators went without payment or with very little for prolonged amounts of time, so I can only assume that there was no money for any marketing, nor the financial room to afford taking a gamble with an alternative payment system.

[Leshy]

Originally Posted by Ado

Leshy I cant believe you dont get my point, although I get yours. You mention hindsight its nothing to do with hindsight, you mention problems its nothing to do with problems. The problem about PA relates to spinners buisness knowledge or rather his opinion about the core revenue generating model of PA. Allow me to explain.

Spinner is obviously under the impression that PA is a service, that the users should pay for the service in much the same way we pay for a internet connection or another online game such as AO or AC2. This would be good providing PA was fun. When we take it down to the bare bones PA is nothing more than sim planet, a repetative game when played in a 1 v the universe way.

What he has failed to do is understand the community and their revenue generating ability. He had the right idea in r5 by doing the buy one get one free model, but he didnt take this far enough. He expected the community to act as his agent, his advertiser and his bug tester but gave them no financial incentive to do so, more so he expected them to pay.

Imagine this for an instance, pa starts in round 5 with what 10k players ? they each pay 10$ each for a planet. Spinner gave ONE free account with each away which increases the effective planets to 20k (excluding multis) and increases the resources by 2x WITHOUT any financial insentive. What reason do you have to bring friends into pa ? none.

CHange this to, 10$ for a planet, with one free for a friend, however if you REFER people they get a planet for 5$ (more players, more resources but crucially MORE money). You offer anyone who gets more than 5 or 10 friends a free round following this. What happens next round.. the process repeats intself with some people turning into walking recruiters.

Im not talking our of my ass here btw... i looked into this and almost got funding from a buisness development loan from a bank to progress it (only my friends starting jobs stopped it) it WOULD generate a profit and initial research suggested a static -> growing player base and enough money to develop new features decreasing the churn rate.

To sum up, Im not BS'ing or hitting spinner in personal way, I AM saying spinner is a bad buisness man and doesnt respect or understand the community which he represents and for this he deservs NO respect.

[Leshy]

Originally Posted by Leshy

I do get yours, I simply don't agree with it (fully).

heh

Not entirely. A very good portion of existing users simply shared costs with people they already knew, effectively not bringing in new players, but simply reducing the round price to $5 an account. Round 5 didn't contain 10k existing users and 10k users who were brought in on a free account, like you imply. Not by a long shot.

Where's the incentive in advertising other people to a game so that they can pay half the price you did? The only thing people will do is have one person sign up for an account, then 'refer' the game a few other people that were going to play anyway, so that they can share costs and play for cheaper than they would, possibly with free rounds in the future.

However, you've obviously checked this out in more detail than I did, so I'll grant you this point, although I remain highly sceptical. People spamming http://www.planetarion.com/signup.pl?refer=l33td00d around doesn't really seem like a viable business model to me, especially considering that people who are unwilling to pay over the internet likely won't even do so when someone recommends it.

I'll not disagree that the static P2P model is not the ideal one - or we wouldn't have a decreasing playerbase over time. However, I wasn't there when financial decisions were made, so I can't judge. As you said yourself, you would have needed funding from a bank in order to make things work - likely Planetarion was already running in debt by that time and thus that starting capital wouldn't have been there.

[W]

Did you know, Spinner has on several occations promissed never to make a mid-round change again?

[Psi_K]

Originally Posted by W

Did you know, Spinner has on several occations promissed never to make a mid-round change again?

He's also stated all the rounds would start on time ...
Has that EVER happened? :bebored:

[BlueArmy]

Originally Posted by Ado

It ok BA has whined lots of times when his fleet has been raped through "no fault of his own" perhaps its because the number of people whos bluffs have been caught and their fleets raped arnt related to him that he doesnt give a fk.

Ado, your post doesnt make very much sense.. I cant understand the point of it atleast, might be because it's in the middle of the night and i'm a pretty stupid child.. If u try to incline that i've been whining on the forum because my fleet has been raped i would really like to know one occation that has happened.. i only whine to my allies
But i would like to know the meaning of your post so i have a clue what u are trying to blame me for