I missed the memo too.

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I play MMOs. I need a signature which is deep, thought provoking, and devours bandwidth with the voracity of rabid weasels. It is also, by nature, vaguely sad with a tinge of my obvious internal, unfathomable loneliness. Like this,   , but at 1.3megs packed into 2 by 6 inches. ANIMATED.

yea we know that,  but we dont know what the patch is. 

Even so, why the secrecy?  Normally a sheduled patch is something to make song and dance about as if we were welsh

http://forums.perpetuum-online.com/post/36555/#p36555

We already had the Summer 1 and 2 posts, which are telling us what is coming in the content patched.

Historically the blog about the content goes up just after the patch. The main reason being that I don't think they alwasys know for sure which features are going to be ready, and that some features/changes directly effect the economy and/or indirectly effect the sales value of items.

They did post on the server status page all week that the server would be down for patching, so there was warning about the process, but I'm always a huge fan of seeing dev posts here in the forum, which would have been an easy addiitional warning they could have done since not everyone checks the server status pages.

This is how it has always been. They will release the patchnotes once it's actually deployed not before. This avoids problems where notes don't match the patch (!) because of last minute issues that lead to the removal of things because they break something. Also leaking info early, while server with previous version is still running can lead to a situation where the person who reads em first can capitalize on it (price adjustments, module changes, etc..)

Snow you need to take the tinfoil hat off

I'd like it if they started organizing a Council of Planetary Management or similar to run balance and content ideas by. Elected, of course. That way they can have their secrecy, and we can give our input by proxy.

Dev spy alt = best spy alt.

Sadly as nice of an idea as "csm" is, can see why it doesn't work, in perception or reality.

Though allegedly there are cool kids club cards.  I wanna know how to get one!

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I play MMOs. I need a signature which is deep, thought provoking, and devours bandwidth with the voracity of rabid weasels. It is also, by nature, vaguely sad with a tinge of my obvious internal, unfathomable loneliness. Like this,   , but at 1.3megs packed into 2 by 6 inches. ANIMATED.

yea, have no problems with release patch notes just before or right after a patch... thats like how every game does it...

But to not announce that its coming.. and to wait until several hours before announcing a 3 hour DT....   that is just weird.

Its just that, in the past week population is dwindling once again as people lose interest and default to "play another game while EP builds up"... or... "ill come back when there is an update"

The problem with letting people think that nothings going on or even that a big patch is imminent is that once people start playing another game... its kinda hard to rip them away again.

Until the blog just now all we knew was "this summer" .. officially the end of summer is several months away, now, with Eve you still have to log in to switch skills.. but with PO, you dont need to, you just sit and wait, and the longer you wait the less interested you get and the more reward you get when you do come back.

I just cant help but think that if Devs just said something as simple as "big update coming in the next few weeks"  then the drop in activity could have been avoided as people build up excitment and speculation.

no its quite simple.

let me illustrate.

There is a party going on, everyone is having fun... the party eventually dies down because nothing is happening.   people go home, because its boring.

party organisers suprise everyone at the last minute.

Had they announced before hand the shedule, people would have stayed.. the party would continue.

Avatar Creations have basically waited until everyone is asleep and already going home before saying "hey.. were doing something"

loads of people have pm'ed me to say "yea but they are a new dev company still learing"... dude, ive been a gamer all my life, Im no pro, but I know what I need as a gamer to keep my enthusiam going.  what, so becoming a dev means you suddenly forgot all that?

bah.. whatever, who cares.... oh wait..

Ya, not everyone is looking to start over with a new game, when you have 4-7 years of training and power invested in a game, its going to take more then a few RMT's to get you to switch.

The good news is the exposure and they know that this game exists now.

They'll probably hop back in when the patch hits just to see it anyway, but those players going back to eve are going to go back regardless; 4-5 years of invested time isn't going to compete with 30 days.

The numbers are better than they were. They did all they could for the game, and are still doing everything. If anything they wasted a chunk of the opportunity... but sayings it's a great one is either a lie or being misinformed at best.