Evolution of PA

[Chika]

Was just browsing some old threads and came across this particular post. It was posted 2 years and 1 month ago. In lack of any support words and fear of steering the point away, I will just post the comment, and see you guy's take on it.

Originally posted by Obfuscator

There are no elite alliances left, I agree. But it's not because there are only crap alliances, with crap players. Rather, it's because the only people left playing PA are far too dedicated. The skill level is much higher on average than in the early rounds, and most every alliance is mainly professional....hence making a truly elite alliance would be nigh impossible in this environment. An "elite" group of 40 players won't stand a chance against the bigger alliances(even if their skill level is somewhat lower on average), because their skill level differential simply won't be enough to make up the difference.

[Cayl]

He was voicing a concern that I had with the game that essentially led to my taking a long PA break.

Basically the players of the highest level were driving the game forward into whatever course that may have been. The slow learners were catching up, and the less able players were leaving, and to be successful you literally had to be a professional Planetarion player. Now I'd say it differently, I would say that you have to be almost a religous Planetarion player. Planetarion is far beyond any game, and its even worse than a normal job. Its a life path you choose to follow.

(this incidentally is why the game has reached a valley floor in its life cycle. Its a niche game for people who happen to have way way too much time on their hands and nothing more productive to spend it on).

[Cochese]

Cayl pretty much sums it.

When (if) they figure out how to make skill > activity instead of activity > skill (like other multi-player games) without making the game too crap, they'll start getting customers again.

This business of having to be online in the middle of the night to launch attacks (or sort defense against your own incoming) or do a res/con is outrageously stupid, as is getting obliterated because you got a normal nights' sleep and/or worked all day.

[Cayl]

The general premise of my idea is to expand the Planetarion franchise to include 3 different types of games that have varying expectations of activity vs skill and let people choose which ones they play, I have more specific ideas in mind, but as Jolt/PA is a business and have never taken a high level suggestion like this seriously, I doubt it'll ever come to pass.

[wakey]

tbh I think for the average joe playing PA its now more accessable than its been since that original post was made. Activity is still key and will still put many people off BUT its a marked improvement over the dark days of r5-r9.5.where an average player joining the game would leave as quickly as they joined and the average experianced player would be closely follwoing

[Stals]

Originally Posted by Cochese

Cayl pretty much sums it.

When (if) they figure out how to make skill > activity instead of activity > skill (like other multi-player games) without making the game too crap, they'll start getting customers again....

every multi player games, or any games for that matter is about activity :P activity means practice which leads to skills, altho PA is as u say activity, and far from any skills

[Cochese]

True; with 3 tick combat you could really get wtfpwned in a night.

Cayl is probably on the right track though, have a few difference choices (universes) where low/medium/high activity players would all have something catered to their specific needs.

[pig]

Originally Posted by wakey

tbh I think for the average joe playing PA its now more accessable than its been since that original post was made. Activity is still key and will still put many people off BUT its a marked improvement over the dark days of r5-r9.5.where an average player joining the game would leave as quickly as they joined and the average experianced player would be closely follwoing

I disagree, in the "dark ages" there were a considerable amnt of players, be it top players, be it newbs, now a days ure either top tier or bottom tier, no happy medium. To do well in pa you need to be on virtually 24/7 its weird, trying to lead a noraml life is strange. But in the dark ages, there were enuf other noobs to attack as a n00b, now a days the game may be easier to pick up but certainly not easier to play, ie playin against ppl of the same lvl.

I believe cayl has the right kind of idea tbh. Perhpas what I was thinking of was a paid game and free game. Two different games, the paid game has prestige, thats where allies, rank etc matter, the free game wud allow new ppl to get the bug of pa then hopefully move onto paid pa and become the more pro player.

[Cayl]

Actually my idea goes a bit farther... Its been a while since I thought about it in any detail, but why not:

Planetarion: Galaxies - Low Activity - A PA themed board game essentially with actual geography and 10 planets fighting over territory in a time before Jumpgates and Astropods. Activity level would be low, ticks happening every 6, 12, or 24 hours, set as a variable game condition. 1 Credit would get you the right to be in up to 3 games at one time, for a set period of time.

Planetarion Classic - Medium Activity: What we're all playing

Speed PA - High activity in short bursts, with games starting on a regular basis and on differing days of the week.

A persistent ranking system such as that used for chess games, or something similar could be rigged up for the Galaxies and Speed PA versions

[pig]

sounds good, but unfortunately judging by jolt and pa team, im not sure if they cba :/

however i still feel that the key to getting new players is a mass round where its free for all, with proper advertising, or sell it to idler

[Cayl]

Thas the key to getting to new planets, not players.

[Cochese]

Originally Posted by Stals

every multi player games, or any games for that matter is about activity :P activity means practice which leads to skills, altho PA is as u say activity, and far from any skills

In other online games your player doesn't sit there idle when you're offline, it is removed from the universe. Can you imagine playing CS or something, and offline people are just standing there, getting fragged over and over again?

Yes, being more active means you get more practice, and thus increase your skill overall...but in games like that, you don't have as much to lose. If you die, you start right back over (minus a few weapons or what have you) and generally can keep competing. In PA, you have a lot more time invested into your planet, and starting over isn't that easy. The more you get whacked, the harder it is to compete, and as time goes by, the greater the distance becomes between first and last place.

[Shoshuro]

@ Cayl

3 different universe types = 3 servers = more costs = more work (admin)

As for ranking system the ELO system is hard to implement in a game like PA. (It is the best though to measure individual player skill)

@ Cochese

CS is a mix of individual skill and strategy. In a 5 on 5 clan war the team with best players/plans will win and the other team cannot whine - they were just worse and lost (Same for other famous games like WC3, AOE etc).

PA is a different game now, real time and multiple teams (alliances) competing in a frantic virtual universe. Anyhow active players will always lead the game and any measures to restrict their success so "less-active" have a chance will only make things worse.

[CrazyConrad]

Originally Posted by pig

sounds good, but unfortunately judging by jolt and pa team, im not sure if they cba :/

however i still feel that the key to getting new players is a mass round where its free for all, with proper advertising, or sell it to idler

I rather see second option there happen though :/

[Bashar]

Originally Posted by Chika

Originally posted by Obfuscator

There are no elite alliances left, I agree. But it's not because there are only crap alliances, with crap players. Rather, it's because the only people left playing PA are far too dedicated. The skill level is much higher on average than in the early rounds, and most every alliance is mainly professional....hence making a truly elite alliance would be nigh impossible in this environment. An "elite" group of 40 players won't stand a chance against the bigger alliances(even if their skill level is somewhat lower on average), because their skill level differential simply won't be enough to make up the difference.

This is REALLY sad, but I actually remember reading that post.

[Dreadnought FTW]

Yes, all about activity, i mean, we must be unskilled because of our high activity......

PA is possibly one of the only games, where you put your "planets" life in the hands of somebody else to protect, and thats cool.

So its a mix of three things

a) Your , your alliance and your enemies activity
b) Your, your alliance and your enemies skill
c) Luck

c) is probably the greatest in this game but a) and b) are both very influential

[Cayl]

Originally Posted by Shoshuro

@ Cayl

3 different universe types = 3 servers = more costs = more work (admin)

the final piece of your equation is:
= More Players = More Money

You gotta spend money to make money. Either you innovate your product or you let it stagnate and squeeze such small cash as you can out of it until people get tired and leave.

As for ranking system the ELO system is hard to implement in a game like PA. (It is the best though to measure individual player skill)

The ELO system would be hard to implement for PA-Team, not for the PA variants I discussed. I would also not advocate persistant rankings for normal PA, I favor a clean slate for each game.

PA is a different game now, real time and multiple teams (alliances) competing in a frantic virtual universe. Anyhow active players will always lead the game and any measures to restrict their success so "less-active" have a chance will only make things worse.

Thats basically correct but you don't do anything with this thought. You reach the conclusion you've been spoon fed for 14 rounds and decide that its final and thats that. You don't also reach the conclusion that the kind of activity this game requires dooms it to being a mediocre game with 2-5k players, 90% of which do not play seriously, and another 5% of any given round will play seriously to win but only for that one round.

Assuming that you are Jolt and want to make Planetarion as profitable as possible, the idea to me is that about a quarter million people out there remember the Planetarion name, and so you can attach similar themed games to it, and keep the community and franchise intact while appealing to a broader market.

So yeah. They'd have to spend a little money on developing that. No I don't feel that they would be receptive to my ideas, hence my reluctance to even get into it early on.

[wakey]

Originally Posted by pig

I disagree, in the "dark ages" there were a considerable amnt of players, be it top players, be it newbs, now a days ure either top tier or bottom tier, no happy medium. To do well in pa you need to be on virtually 24/7 its weird, trying to lead a noraml life is strange. But in the dark ages, there were enuf other noobs to attack as a n00b, now a days the game may be easier to pick up but certainly not easier to play, ie playin against ppl of the same lvl.

I believe cayl has the right kind of idea tbh. Perhpas what I was thinking of was a paid game and free game. Two different games, the paid game has prestige, thats where allies, rank etc matter, the free game wud allow new ppl to get the bug of pa then hopefully move onto paid pa and become the more pro player.

Newbies during the dark ages, WTF werre you smoking ffs. Newbies between rounds 6-9 were an endangered spiecies, with it not being free the amount of new players coming in was reduced and those who did join werent staying for long as they found this a game that was hostile and didnt give them a chance to find their feet or have fun.

Now if your deciding to use the term n00b as one refering to any player iin a lower ranked alliance then yourself then in some ways your right there was more of them around atleast in the first few (8 and 9 though I believe had less players than we have had for the last few rounds and certainly fewer paid accounts) but number of players isnt the sole factor that decides how accessable the game is. It can have 180k players but still be extreamly unaccessablle and you can have 2k players and have an accessable game.

Simply back in those dark ages we had a situation where there was the kind of simple divide that you claim there is now, you had the top tier alliances aka those in the major blocks. This would generally make up what atleast 6 alliances with some of the more elabroate blocking situations seeing atleast 12 alliances. For eveyone else in the lower tier they stood very little chance of surviving long, they would reach a certain score and roid level and find themselves bashed right back down again with no way to respond as such they became pretty useless and droves of them lost intrest every single round (a much higher % of the players in this group than the % of top tier players who quit, and just realise how many of your top tier alliance mates quit over time and your realise how many this was, hey just look at the way the distribution of players has gone, for some rounds it looked increasingly likly that the hardcore players would become the majority of the playerbase, Its started swinging back a bit now though)

The way that alliances broke down ftheir blocks and the changes in the game which have reduced the need to be up at 3am to be successful with an attack has made the game more diverse and ultimitly more accessable to the average joe.

[Shoshuro]

Originally Posted by Cayl

Assuming that you are Jolt and want to make Planetarion as profitable as possible, the idea to me is that about a quarter million people out there remember the Planetarion name, and so you can attach similar themed games to it, and keep the community and franchise intact while appealing to a broader market.

If Jolt wanted PA to attract more people it would make an "insider" advertising campaign. This is in their other gaming servers/activities with little rotating 1 liner announcements etc. If they made a huge campaign like that then 10,000 paid accounts would be the goal at least. Still the real challenge is:

1) Will 90% of those new people just init their 6 roids and then go "And now what?"
2) Play abit and on the first bashing they take disappear?

The new customer aka new player needs heavy support when it comes to a game like PA and need a very dedicated crew / ingame coding features. Cayl and many others have proposed many good ideas concerning game play and orientation features for new people. At the end of the day though Jolt will decide mainly what will happen.

Perhaps if this game was being run by a committee of experienced players we could see a real evolution.

Anyway "Gaming is believing" so keep it up

[Chika]

Hmm, I was thinking that PA did idd evolve, Taken into account this was said 5-6 rounds ago, and what is going on today. I really wasn't looking at the "more money, more players" angle, that would have made the thread PD or something. From the alliance point of view, I think PA has evolved. Though some excellent points have been made.....

[Kal]

Originally Posted by Cayl

The general premise of my idea is to expand the Planetarion franchise to include 3 different types of games that have varying expectations of activity vs skill and let people choose which ones they play, I have more specific ideas in mind, but as Jolt/PA is a business and have never taken a high level suggestion like this seriously, I doubt it'll ever come to pass.

i have had similar ideas to that myself, so i'd defintly like to have a chat with you on irc at some point

[demiGOD]

i know one of the things that definitely evolved is the ling-go..

-newbie ---> newb ---> NOOB!#@!!# (almost sounds like a curse word)
-sorry ---> my-bad ---> Soz (?? - interesting how that evolved..)
-asteroids --------------> ROID
-attack and steal asteroids -------> to ROID
-(actual curse words bleeped on any forums in general) ----> WTF, FFS, OMFG, etc.
-ruled ---> defeated ---> downed ---> owned ---> wtfpwn'ed (hmmmm )

[Mek]

Originally Posted by demiGOD

i know one of the things that definitely evolved is the ling-go..

-newbie ---> newb ---> NOOB!#@!!# (almost sounds like a curse word)
-sorry ---> my-bad ---> Soz (?? - interesting how that evolved..)
-asteroids --------------> ROID
-attack and steal asteroids -------> to ROID
-(actual curse words bleeped on any forums in general) ----> WTF, FFS, OMFG, etc.
-ruled ---> defeated ---> downed ---> owned ---> wtfpwn'ed (hmmmm )

*sigh* the joys of evolution

[The_Fish]

Omg Wtf Lolz!

[G.K Zhukov]

When a game has reached the stages of wtfpwn'ed, it might be a good idea to leave.

[Mek]

Originally Posted by G.K Zhukov

When a game has reached the stages of wtfpwn'ed, it might be a good idea to leave.

i think the real question is....what comes next after "wtfpwn'ed"