A PLea for free randoms 2 weeks into teh round.

[Rumad]

This is a simple plea to teh new owners of PA - NOT THE CREATORS.

Please, please, please make free random sign ups two weeks into the game. The game is dying and round 10 beign completely free will repair some of the damage that has been down to this community, but go that little further and offer free random gal sign ups 2 weeks after the private gals have signed up.

Regards

Rumad

PA Player round 1- round 9

[Jester]

You know what, why don't you go to the Jolt homepage, dig up some contact info and send them an email asking? It's a thousand times more likely to catch their attention than this boardpost.

Jester

[Rumad]

Originally posted by Jester667
You know what, why don't you go to the Jolt homepage, dig up some contact info and send them an email asking? It's a thousand times more likely to catch their attention than this boardpost.

Jester

I think itss about time we saw someoen from jolt as the new owners of the community ratehr than the political puppets (creators) posting on there behalf. I wanna hear from someone in jolt and i think we deserve it here, nit through emails or having to post somehwere else. But sadly I think your right :/

[RealJames]

In an ideal world, yes. But this is no ideal world. With changes to initiation after two weeks is a good time to start up agriculture.

To avoid this you'd need to wait at least a month.

[Jester]

Originally posted by Rumad
I think itss about time we saw someoen from jolt as the new owners of the community ratehr than the political puppets (creators) posting on there behalf. I wanna hear from someone in jolt and i think we deserve it here, nit through emails or having to post somehwere else. But sadly I think your right :/

The fact that you can write the occasional reasonable post yet still miss the boat/train/spaceship/whatever so completely is actually a little scary.

You never, ever talked to anyone of the 5S people, so why on earth the sudden interest in the owners?

Jester

[RealJames]

Originally posted by Rumad
I think itss about time we saw someoen from jolt as the new owners of the community ratehr than the political puppets (creators) posting on there behalf. I wanna hear from someone in jolt and i think we deserve it here, nit through emails or having to post somehwere else. But sadly I think your right :/

I would like to see a Jolt representative on the boards.

You can contact them via [email protected], but whether they want to know or not is a different issue.

[Scouse]

Originally posted by Rumad
I think itss about time we saw someoen from jolt as the new owners of the community ratehr than the political puppets (creators) posting on there behalf.

Originally posted by RealJames
I would like to see a Jolt representative on the boards.

The reason they pay the 'creators' is so they don't need to deal with the players.



Your long absences followed by your flurry of board posts really makes you look a bit foolish, Rumad.

[Leshy]

Did something suddenly change, or is Jolt merely the company hosting Planetarion? As far as I know, the owners of Planetarion are still SimTech.

[Rumad]

Originally posted by Leshy
Did something suddenly change, or is Jolt merely the company hosting Planetarion? As far as I know, the owners of Planetarion are still SimTech.

I think from one of the annoucements i read simtech is the holding company, but zeus stated in one of his announcemenst jolt was teh new owners 5th of jan in announcements:

------------

Zeus said:

As many of you know, the infamous gaming company Jolt now control the Planetarion game. Jolt , will handle all management of finances, payments marketing, etc and intend to seriously develop the game and community.

------------

Now this tells me they own it.

I know the new owners dont wish to dela with us, but the creators havesaid so much crap over the last few rounds I think the least they can do is get someone heavy hitting out here to respond to things.

Scouse if i look foolish so be it, at least I know i am about something rather than a little troll that climbs out of his cave daily to post crap.

[Bashar]

Originally posted by Leshy
Did something suddenly change, or is Jolt merely the company hosting Planetarion? As far as I know, the owners of Planetarion are still SimTech.

SimTech is a company owned by jolt, it basically exists only on paper, and has been set up so that, if PA brings massive debts, it will only get SimTech into debt rather than Jolt, hence, if PA goes down, it doesn't take Jolt with it, only SimTech.

It was created purely to own planetarion.

[Rumad]

Originally posted by Jester667
The fact that you can write the occasional reasonable post yet still miss the boat/train/spaceship/whatever so completely is actually a little scary.

You never, ever talked to anyone of the 5S people, so why on earth the sudden interest in the owners?

Jester

i missed this post, but 5s was a holding company for Spinner andhis ppl foolish enough to have bought into 5s. So n reality Spinner was the CEO and the "face" of 5s. I actually have talked to the creators quite a bit at i events so i think in essence you are wrong.

However creators are now essentially game developers, not the movers and shakers. This is why you need a new "face" someone from within the new owners to actually represent there company.

But we are all allowed our own opinions and this is mine so to say I am missing anything is neither here nor there. I represent what i believe to be correct. Same as you do when you post.

[Leshy]

Originally posted by Bashar
It was created purely to own planetarion.

Then what was up with the story about SimTech having created award-winning stuff for over seven years?

[Rumad]

Originally posted by Leshy
Then what was up with the story about SimTech having created award-winning stuff for over seven years?

Its a game development company owned by jolt which has been in existence for 7 years.

The company itself is a shell for watever game designers are used.

[Leshy]

Ah, right. That clears up matters then

[JC]

Originally posted by Rumad
round 10 beign completely free will repair some of the damage

I would be amazed if any round is PA is ever totally free again, as far as i know there are no plans to make r10 free, i dont know where you got that info from.

[Bashar]

I sent a long email to Jolt, judging by what I have seen and heard of jolt so far though, it'll be ignored.

[Cochese]

I sent a simliar, long email, to the owner of Jolt a short time after the sale of Planetarion was announced.

There was no response.

[Bashar]

Any idea where in the UK Jolt is based?

[Cochese]

I've no idea, sorry :/

[Gerbie]

Originally posted by Rumad
This is a simple plea to teh new owners of PA - NOT THE CREATORS.

Please, please, please make free random sign ups two weeks into the game. The game is dying and round 10 beign completely free will repair some of the damage that has been down to this community, but go that little further and offer free random gal sign ups 2 weeks after the private gals have signed up.

Regards

Rumad

PA Player round 1- round 9

The main issue for the new owners is to maximize their income since they made a large investment and expect to get a return on it. On a short term it is necessary to get as many people to pay as possible. Less people will pay if they knew it would be free in a few weeks.
On the long term it is essential to broathen the memberbase. This can be done by bringing in new players. New players usually start playing for free, so making the game free for new random accounts after a week or two would be a good idea. It seems illogical to make such a decision public long before it is actually implemented.

[Rumad]

Originally posted by Gerbie
The main issue for the new owners is to maximize their income since they made a large investment and expect to get a return on it. On a short term it is necessary to get as many people to pay as possible. Less people will pay if they knew it would be free in a few weeks.
On the long term it is essential to broathen the memberbase. This can be done by bringing in new players. New players usually start playing for free, so making the game free for new random accounts after a week or two would be a good idea. It seems illogical to make such a decision public long before it is actually implemented.

It is a logical idea, but i think that while i undertsand some may not pay you have to look at the bigger picture.

Firstly to tell the community would let those that have suffered the longest see some light at the end of the tunnel. Some may drop out, but this would also be corrected by old players coming back and new players getting to know the game. As the community strengthened, more would be willing to play as a 2 week gap between free and pay is a bigbloody gap. While the littel fella's are still struggling to get there mines someone is already trying to abuse the max cap rules.

I think they should have mroe faith as to who would pay for tehre accounts and who wont, especially if r10 is to be totally free. There is no quick fix to getting this community back on its feet, its gnna require some commitment to a longer term investment plan.

IMO even if round ten was completely free, you would not be able to put right 8 rounds of problems by giving 3 months of free play.

[Bashar]

I don't know where the rumours of r10 being free came from, but they are untrue, r10 will not be free.

[Ditcher]

There is no way rnd10 can be that good to get players back without going free again.

[Rumad]

Originally posted by Bashar
I don't know where the rumours of r10 being free came from, but they are untrue, r10 will not be free.

/sarcasm

Thank you for your role representing jolt and its board in this thread

/sarcasm

Actually scouse suggested it on ad. No one is suggesting it will be free just what we believe needs to happen to get things back to how they should be.

However without some sort of free intake pa will continue to die.

[Linea]

I was on PA for the 2 rounds before it became required that you pay. I have been unable to go on PA since, except for the occaisional Free Account where I can only get to 3 Million points. The reason is this: I am still a child. I am unable to pay for it. Beleave me, if I did have means to pay for it, then I probably would. I used to be in a Galaxy of 25 active members, we all came from the same school and we were all within 2 years of age of each other. We all got together for 2 rounds, and it was great. We had entire galaxy attacks where we got together half a million ships and sent them off to someone high on the top 100 list to have a nice big fight, or to eradicate some other galaxy. But then pay was introduced, and the whole lot of us were unable to play anymore. If round 10 were made free, we would come back, and naturally, we would spread the word of Planetarion to our friends. By requireing that you pay, you are preventing a whole lot of the younger generation from playing...

The other thing is that we need to be given an example of what we would get if we were to pay, which we will be able to do some time in the near future, no restrictions or anything like that. The thing is that we don't know if paying will be worth it, so we need to know what it will be like.

Round 10 needs to be free.

Thankyou.

[zenopus]

Originally posted by Gerbie
Less people will pay if they knew it would be free in a few weeks.

There is no reason why free accounts would be "open for all". Jolt have an established loyal (presumably) community. One option Jolt have is to offer a free account to anyone who had an account on the Jolt forums at the time PA changed hands. Which also eliminates a lot of multi concerns re. free accounts.
Obviously they could offer free accounts via other channels in parallel.

[zenopus]

Originally posted by Bashar
Any idea where in the UK Jolt is based?

The co-location link on the jolt site suggests Telehouse London and two other sites.

[Rumad]

Originally posted by Linea
I was on PA for the 2 rounds before it became required that you pay. I have been unable to go on PA since, except for the occaisional Free Account where I can only get to 3 Million points. The reason is this: I am still a child. I am unable to pay for it. Beleave me, if I did have means to pay for it, then I probably would. I used to be in a Galaxy of 25 active members, we all came from the same school and we were all within 2 years of age of each other. We all got together for 2 rounds, and it was great. We had entire galaxy attacks where we got together half a million ships and sent them off to someone high on the top 100 list to have a nice big fight, or to eradicate some other galaxy. But then pay was introduced, and the whole lot of us were unable to play anymore. If round 10 were made free, we would come back, and naturally, we would spread the word of Planetarion to our friends. By requireing that you pay, you are preventing a whole lot of the younger generation from playing...

The other thing is that we need to be given an example of what we would get if we were to pay, which we will be able to do some time in the near future, no restrictions or anything like that. The thing is that we don't know if paying will be worth it, so we need to know what it will be like.

Round 10 needs to be free.

Thankyou.

Great post

Jolt Take note - these are teh sort of ppl we need playing pa fs.

[Rumad]

Originally posted by zenopus
There is no reason why free accounts would be "open for all". Jolt have an established loyal (presumably) community. One option Jolt have is to offer a free account to anyone who had an account on the Jolt forums at the time PA changed hands. Which also eliminates a lot of multi concerns re. free accounts.
Obviously they could offer free accounts via other channels in parallel.

Good idea, however I would like to see some sort of limited free account with random gals to get ppl into the game and to get some targets for the mid/lower score ranged players.

[Bashar]

Originally posted by Rumad
/sarcasm

Thank you for your role representing jolt and its board in this thread

/sarcasm

Actually scouse suggested it on ad. No one is suggesting it will be free just what we believe needs to happen to get things back to how they should be.

However without some sort of free intake pa will continue to die.

/sarcasm

Thank you for your excellent capability at taking in information from all the sources in PA that provide it

/sarcasm

Actually, every creator who has mentioned anything to do with p2p in the future has said that PA will not be free in round 10. All I was doing is repeating what his been said time and time again, but you seem to have somehow missed.

[Rumad]

Originally posted by Bashar

Actually, every creator who has mentioned anything to do with p2p in the future has said that PA will not be free in round 10. All I was doing is repeating what his been said time and time again, but you seem to have somehow missed.

Remind me never to invite yopu if i ever start a activist group.

/sarcasm
Spinner says so it must be true
/sarcasm

[Bashar]

Originally posted by Rumad
Remind me never to invite yopu if i ever start a activist group.

/sarcasm
Spinner says so it must be true
/sarcasm

you did ask for that reply from me, and that reasponse to it was pathetic, I am sure you can do better

'twasn't Spinner, he hasn't been around, Zeus, Kloopy (and I think possibly Prince) have said it at different times.

[LORD-NIKO]

MAKE The game like this:

P2P: PRIVATE GALS!
FREE: Random Gals!

1. gets us new players...
2. the one that want to be in gal with m8s pay!

[Rumad]

Originally posted by LORD-NIKO
MAKE The game like this:

P2P: PRIVATE GALS!
FREE: Random Gals!

1. gets us new players...
2. the one that want to be in gal with m8s pay!

well i think some pay should have have teh choice of going random and some score cap, though higher than 3 million.

I also think that randoms can join private gals into the round if they are willing to pay there accounts up and that if they do there free spots are released for someothers to try the game.

[Rumad]

Originally posted by Bashar
you did ask for that reply from me, and that reasponse to it was pathetic, I am sure you can do better

'twasn't Spinner, he hasn't been around, Zeus, Kloopy (and I think possibly Prince) have said it at different times.

I think you missed the point. when you are trying to change something (like a policy or a law) you don't accept what you are told, you work towards the goal you think will benefit the counrtry/players/whoever the hell the change is for.

If the person in authority says its wrong, do you accept it or do you stand by what you think?

I think my reply was clearly above your head

[Zeus]

I really dont think allowing free accounts to join a paying universe after two weeks would benifit anything.

First thoughts that come to mind are:

1. Why pay, when u can enjoy 2.5 months of Planetarion gaming for free? In total honesty, I beleive to follow your sugestion Rumad, would reduce the projected income to the owners over round 9 period, Namely many wouldnt pay for it, when they can play it for free.

2. The days of the FREE net are sadly gone. Everything costs, and I believe Planetarion will never be COMPLETELY free again. The owners pay out money to run/develope Planetarion, only right they should get that money back. How they decide to get that money back is upto them. You must understand, before the change off ownership, you where kept pretty uptodate as to what was going on with Fifth Season AS & Planetarion. To assume Jolt wish this flow off information on its own internal business decisions is rather silly. They are a business and they intend of providing a game for you to subscribe too, that you will enjoy playing that is all. You dont own shares in Jolt, therfore you/we have no say in what it decides to do with its own product.

3. Anytime you allow free accounts into game, weither temp accounts or long-term free accounts, you are simply opening the doors to massive abuse, by multis & people trying to get into a nice galaxy or cluster. Why should you pay for a round, which is overrun, controlled, dominated by the multis/cheats, etc.. Then there is the massive customer support eliment to allowing free accounts, not to meantion the increased load, which may effect the page delivery speed to the paying customers, namely decrease the service of Planetarion to the paying customers.

Finally, dont get me wrong about this. I was in support orginally of free round 9, for a fun round to increase player base etc....
But others decided it would be wrong and financially unstable to begin a new era of Planetarion running into 3 months of dept straight away. You have to understand also that a very high majority of those FREE players playing, will either never pay, or simply cant pay for Planetarion. Therfore they are not profitible or benifical to Planetarions future. There are however a number of "other" ways to increase player base, without opening the doors to the multis, I have already put those ideas and solutions to the Jolt before I left. I have said this before and I'll say it again, I would have a problem with introducing all this new blood during round 9, as it is not the product I would want people to discuss & promote around the internet. Namely it is not the product I would want to sell. Personally, I would only start selling Planetarion again, once round 10 hits beta, as round 10 will certainly be a product worth selling and promoting to gamers.

[Rumad]

Originally posted by Zeus
I really dont think allowing free accounts to join a paying universe after two weeks would benifit anything.

First thoughts that come to mind are:

1. Why pay, when u can enjoy 2.5 months of Planetarion gaming for free? In total honesty, I beleive to follow your sugestion Rumad, would reduce the projected income to the owners over round 9 period, Namely many wouldnt pay for it, when they can play it for free.

2. The days of the FREE net are sadly gone. Everything costs, and I believe Planetarion will never be COMPLETELY free again. The owners pay out money to run/develope Planetarion, only right they should get that money back. How they decide to get that money back is upto them. You must understand, before the change off ownership, you where kept pretty uptodate as to what was going on with Fifth Season AS & Planetarion. To assume Jolt wish this flow off information on its own internal business decisions is rather silly. They are a business and they intend of providing a game for you to subscribe too, that you will enjoy playing that is all. You dont own shares in Jolt, therfore you/we have no say in what it decides to do with its own product.

3. Anytime you allow free accounts into game, weither temp accounts or long-term free accounts, you are simply opening the doors to massive abuse, by multis & people trying to get into a nice galaxy or cluster. Why should you pay for a round, which is overrun, controlled, dominated by the multis/cheats, etc.. Then there is the massive customer support eliment to allowing free accounts, not to meantion the increased load, which may effect the page delivery speed to the paying customers, namely decrease the service of Planetarion to the paying customers.

Finally, dont get me wrong about this. I was in support orginally of free round 9, for a fun round to increase player base etc....
But others decided it would be wrong and financially unstable to begin a new era of Planetarion running into 3 months of dept straight away. You have to understand also that a very high majority of those FREE players playing, will either never pay, or simply cant pay for Planetarion. Therfore they are not profitible or benifical to Planetarions future. There are however a number of "other" ways to increase player base, without opening the doors to the multis, I have already put those ideas and solutions to the Jolt before I left. I have said this before and I'll say it again, I would have a problem with introducing all this new blood during round 9, as it is not the product I would want people to discuss & promote around the internet. Namely it is not the product I would want to sell. Personally, I would only start selling Planetarion again, once round 10 hits beta, as round 10 will certainly be a product worth selling and promoting to gamers.

OK zeus

First off why pay?

well there are a lot of simple answers to this that could be exploited. Limited tech tree's, limited resources, limited score - always being killed. There are a lot of reasons why someone would want to go and pay up the account they are in.

However if they pay they should have the option to be relocated with other playing players, that way they are all "serious" about playing.


Secondly I do not dispute that a free model will not work in its entirety. I do however think there is limited scope to allow free sign ups - perhaps even linked to teh number of paid accounts.

Most have stopped playing because round after round ppl leave. There is no fun in playing in a 5k universe. There is no enjoyment in killing ppl, until they give p completely.

Thridly Yes multi's would absue it. However round 7 you seemed to proove taht you could find them. Ppl now in main do not want multi's in teh community and will help you work them out of the community. Yes I admit that ppl will try and abuse it, but with your questions they have to use each account indvidually now - not so easy methinks.

Finally I am a accounatnat, I know all about cash flow and how to make a business plan and how to make a financial model and cashflow forecasting work.

You say its just not possibel, well perhaps if you look one dimensionally it isn't, link it into sign ups, get ppl P2P can work, but it needs fresh blood, the only way to do that is free signup's.

Its very easy to have a completely defeatist attitude, but if you continue like that pa wil die. The community is at breaking point, if much more leave there wont be a pa.

There are laods of ways of getting free acconts in so ppl can become part of the community. Limited techs, limited resources, limiting score, all these can cut down on the amount of accounts.

Then there are other things like linking free accounts to teh number of paid sign ups - teh more ppl sign up for pay planetarion, the more free accounts are opened.

If you completely ignore this thinsg will never change. Ppl will keep leaving, the community will grow smaller and then no matter how many p2p ppl sign up it becomes untennable.

You have to have a balance and it has to be mnitored. But done right we all get what we want. Someone even ventured as to allowing jolt members free accounts. Again not a bad idea and if they get a extra 1k pay sign ups was it worth it? I think so for them and for enriching the community.

Simple fact is the more accounst the less one dimensional pa is. The more accounts the mroe target sthe more fun for EVERYONE.

If you wnana talk about any of my points i am open to chatting oon panet :-)

Sorry i cant take anything Rumad says seriously anymore since the "th0ng" incident

[BlueArmy]

Originally posted by Dreadnought!
Sorry i cant take anything Rumad says seriously anymore since the "th0ng" incident

then dont spam here... what rumad says about this case makes much sense.. if they dont do something about establishing a new playerbase they've bought a game that will die within a few rounds...

[Linea]

Right now I am wondering how PA got to round 5 (was its 5?) with out you having to pay for it...anyway...moving on.

Great post Rumad.

Another option is how to pay. Can someone tell me all the ways of paying for an account on PA?

[Sn0w]

Originally posted by Linea
Right now I am wondering how PA got to round 5 (was its 5?) with out you having to pay for it...anyway...moving on.

ads where getting more money then..

[Linea]

Hmm...Why doesn't PA advertise more then? Get more money that way...

[Mong]

I'm assuming the prices will be announced soon. All I can say is that there will be no free Rd9.

As you can guess, this resulted in a heated debate :P

When the prices come out, you'll see various payment options. I personally think it's a bit high, but then Rd10 does look to be absolutely ace, so it may be worth it.

I guess just keep an eye on the announcements.

M.

[RealJames]

Originally posted by Linea
Hmm...Why doesn't PA advertise more then? Get more money that way...

I recall reading something about advertising for R10. *imagines TV ads at 2am on UK telly, targetting the insomniacs*

[Spinner]

Even though Rumad asked to talk to the "owners" of the community, I also think it is not very likely to see them post here.
I am fairly sure they are too business minded and far to busy to come to our beloved forums to be shot at from multiple directions, and I think they want us to that job. Fair enough, as what we wanted was more time to make a good game and take part in the community, and less of the business side of things.

On this point however, these different aspecs certainly come close.

And I have to say I agree with Rumad on this point, to enable somekind of free alternative again to attract newcomers.
There are certainly ways of doing it, and many such ways to chose from, and I will not be surprised if we see an attempt in a near future.

And you can safely assume this will be a nice little ongoing discussion between the new owners, and the creators (-:

laters!

[Salomo]

Originally posted by Spinner
And you can safely assume this will be a nice little ongoing discussion between the new owners, and the creators (-:

laters!

I wonder what was going on in spinners mind when he wrote this post...

was he
A) Just telling us what we wanted to hear

or is he
B) Tired of his job and hence doesn't mind trying to have a "nice little ongoing discussion" with his boss

or does he
C) Have nude photos of the new owners in questionable positions through which he can afford having a "nice little ongoing discussion" with them?

Please cast your vote now!

/me clealry favours Option C




P.S.: Sorry spinner, you asked for shooting though and that was the smallest caliber available :-/

[Rumad]

Originally posted by Spinner
Even though Rumad asked to talk to the "owners" of the community, I also think it is not very likely to see them post here.
I am fairly sure they are too business minded and far to busy to come to our beloved forums to be shot at from multiple directions, and I think they want us to that job. Fair enough, as what we wanted was more time to make a good game and take part in the community, and less of the business side of things.

On this point however, these different aspecs certainly come close.

And I have to say I agree with Rumad on this point, to enable somekind of free alternative again to attract newcomers.
There are certainly ways of doing it, and many such ways to chose from, and I will not be surprised if we see an attempt in a near future.

And you can safely assume this will be a nice little ongoing discussion between the new owners, and the creators (-:

laters!

Tbh I am glad to hear you agree with it, but for the next round not to lose more than a few ppl cause the community is way to small something needs to be done sooner than later.

I sincerely hope something is put in place THIS ROUND

Simply put the round wont last 8 weeks in the universe of the current size.

AFter a chat with prince I think the new owners have no interest in this community, just the cash it will produce. I just hope something is done and soon.

[Teh_Necro]

Originally posted by Mong

When the prices come out, you'll see various payment options. I personally think it's a bit high, but then Rd10 does look to be absolutely ace, so it may be worth it.

Why the hell should i, a paying customer pay more for round 9, just because round 10 is going to be "ace".

If round 10 is "ace" then make me pay more for that, not a degraded version of a half finished round.

-Necro