Planetarion Forums

Ace · 2 Feb 2004, 07:59

I seen on the portal (I think it was) a message from Biffy about payment centers not being around from now on.
He also mentioned Jolt accepts 2 major CC's.

Can someone tell me wich once ????
And in regards to payment centers........I think it's a bad thing to close em.
Will mean a lot of ppl without CC's and not in the UK will have probs paying.

Ace

General Martok · 2 Feb 2004, 10:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ace

I seen on the portal (I think it was) a message from Biffy about payment centers not being around from now on.
He also mentioned Jolt accepts 2 major CC's.

Can someone tell me wich once ????
And in regards to payment centers........I think it's a bad thing to close em.
Will mean a lot of ppl without CC's and not in the UK will have probs paying.

Ace

Doubt they closed by PA-team. I think they are just unavailable atm (Cimager for netherlands, Hearless for Germany I believe?). The short notice prolly didn't help either.. But that's just guessing, till we are notified :/

Qdeathstar · 2 Feb 2004, 14:19

i was going to do the speed round think.. but my credit card is for business (and stuff i can claim was business) only.. so i really have no way of paying... :-/. heh, if anyone has an extra account.. i'd be happy to give you some compensation..

Qdeathstar · 2 Feb 2004, 14:19

Ace, its prolly mastercard and visa.

biffy · 2 Feb 2004, 15:30

Cards accepted are:

Visa/Visa Electron
Mastercard
Switch/Solo
Delta

We realise that the lack of the Payment centres is an annoyance but unfortunately not all the Payment centres have proven trustworthy in the past and we have therefore decided not to use them for the time being. This will hopefully change in the future.

Ace · 2 Feb 2004, 15:37

Biffy,

Plz ask Jolt to start accepting AMEX again.
In that way i don't have to get others to pay for me and I can get 3 credits so I can help 2 others in my alliance if needed.

Ace

Spinner · 2 Feb 2004, 16:52

/me would suggest that Jolt looks to change their processor company, to one that supports more cards.
Quite a number of good UK processors about, who can even work as payment center taking cash, nochex, paypal etc for them. I'll dig up some info and pass on to Jolt (:

Darky · 2 Feb 2004, 19:12

would be nice to know how many accounts from last round were bought using a CC and how many using a payment center. so we could guess already how many ppl will play r11

tbh, i really doubt more then 20%, if not even less, used a credit card for last round, in germany a CC isn´t even common, at least no one from my family/friends/work m8es has one, so without payment centers or paypal guess it´s time to look for a new game

therealmig · 2 Feb 2004, 20:05

There has been some fair points raised in this thread with regards to payment centres, we are currently looking into ways to accept different methods of payments from around the world. I will be liasing with Biffy, Spinner and the rest of PATeam to find a suitable solution which gives everyone an option to atleast have the ability to pay for Planetarion.

Any questions please feel free to contact me

Thanks

Deviant · 2 Feb 2004, 20:08

I also spoke to Biffy, with a very interesting idea for payment. We'll see what happens.

Spinner · 3 Feb 2004, 15:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by Darky

would be nice to know how many accounts from last round were bought using a CC and how many using a payment center. so we could guess already how many ppl will play r11

tbh, i really doubt more then 20%, if not even less, used a credit card for last round, in germany a CC isn´t even common, at least no one from my family/friends/work m8es has one, so without payment centers or paypal guess it´s time to look for a new game

In fact, only about 10% of the users use payment centers.
So you are slightly off with yo estimation. As for german users, no doubt the german payment center was the biggest of them all, but most germans pay by mastercard.
In norway, Visa is more common.
But, all in all, about 10 % of the players used payment centers.
But nobody said payment centers will not be back for rnd 11, it is just not feasable right now.

pablissimo · 3 Feb 2004, 16:27

Aren't there place's that'll process payment via SMS? Granted it'd probably be a fair margin cut from the overheads of processing that way but it might be of some potential.

davidb · 3 Feb 2004, 16:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by biffy

Cards accepted are:

Visa/Visa Electron
Mastercard
Switch/Solo
Delta

i tried paying by solo for round 10 yet it wasnt accepted but they are now correct ?

Spinner · 3 Feb 2004, 16:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by pablissimo

Aren't there place's that'll process payment via SMS? Granted it'd probably be a fair margin cut from the overheads of processing that way but it might be of some potential.

Such a system is expensive to use.
You can probably get decent deals for specific countries, but a global solution costs money.
Most of them have monthly fees and a setup fee though. And those who do not, are purely one-country and give a very low cut, i.e. 25% of the cost to the content provider.
That would mean close to 1 £ per credit or so, which isnt a lot actually.

cbk100 · 4 Feb 2004, 12:02

Well, just make it posible to play for free and these problems will not even be here... ofc. there will then be other problems but if it is not made free PA is dead within too long ( I know I have said this since about r7-r8 but its still not free so I will keep on trying)

btw. Spinner check your mail :-)

cbk

Intruder · 5 Feb 2004, 13:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by Qdeathstar

i was going to do the speed round think.. but my credit card is for business (and stuff i can claim was business) only.. so i really have no way of paying... :-/. heh, if anyone has an extra account.. i'd be happy to give you some compensation..

Hmmm.. are you a girl?

Qdeathstar · 5 Feb 2004, 13:57

ill be whatever you want me to be :-).. i was mainly talking monetary...

wakey · 6 Feb 2004, 18:22

I still like r5's payment scheme, yes i know alot of people complained about effectivly having to pay for two accounts when you could only use one but the idea really was sound. In many ways it was much like the paying of tax to fund the health service, you may not get a direct benifit from it but it has far reaching social advantages. By having a spare account that we could either sell on at half the amount we paid or giving it away for free we were helping those who otherwise wouldnt be able to pay to play the game and these increased numbers made the game better.

Its just a shame much of this community let their greed cloud their judgement of the feature and thus never truely understand it. They were too bothered complaing about what they lost never fully realising that they really just paid for their own account and the second account was just a free gift thrown in. If everyone had just been a little more thoughtful and less focused on themselves which resulted in free accounts being unused as people refused to give them away or used to multi we could have had a payment method that would have helped keep the playing numbers a little higher

therealmig · 6 Feb 2004, 21:11

Wakey we are currently running a similar payment scheme for the speedgames. You purchase 3 credits for £10. These credits can then be used for either yourself ( 1 each speed game) or you and 2 friends for 1 speed game weekend.

The choice is yours

wakey · 12 Feb 2004, 13:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by therealmig

Wakey we are currently running a similar payment scheme for the speedgames. You purchase 3 credits for £10. These credits can then be used for either yourself ( 1 each speed game) or you and 2 friends for 1 speed game weekend.

The choice is yours

While your quite right that there is a bulk buy option (and has been in most rounds) theres actually a subtle difference that makes a fairly major change in most peoples minds between bulk buying and the r5 scheme.

While there may be no difference in reality between bulk buying and giving accounts away free with every purchase it does result in a difference in peoples attitudes. Take the speed rounds for example, you have bought 3 credits and the way its stated drives this fact home that you have paid £3.34 for each of these. This immedialty puts you in a state of mind that your going to make sure you get your moneys worth. As such you will either use the credits in the future OR resell them.

How this differs when the other accounts are freebies is that you pay your £10 and get a single account as the page makes totally clear. This means that the free account your given isnt in most peoples minds part of the deal, you havent paid £5 fo it you have paid £10 for your account and this is a free gift. Now because its a free gift your immediatly less bothered about getting your moneys worth. As such your much more prone to just handing the account away to someone who cant/wont pay to play thus helping keep numbers up.

Its simply all about the attitude that players take to the fee and the 'freebie' pov is on the whole much better for the game imho and it still leaves it open for people to group together to lower costs of accounts.

Actually if I was in charge of the game I would probally go a step further with the freebie accounts and have these accounts activated by codes, these codes would instantly identify the account as a free account and would impose things like banners ect to help the income of the game for those who havent paid. Also because the free accounts would be easierly reconsiable you could expire the free accounts handed out with paid accounts at the end of the round while still allowing paid credits to be rolled over thus removing any reason for these accounts to be held onto and encouraging them to be given away