Author Topic: HiTech and Pyro: Lot's of money to be made!!!  (Read 890 times)

Offline vatiAH

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HiTech and Pyro: Lot's of money to be made!!!
« Reply #15 on: June 15, 2001, 01:10:00 PM »
I also think this is the way things need to progress.  Then again, HTC could buy out CRS and rebuild WWIIonline into something that works.    :D .    You havw to figure CRS will sell cheap soon  :)  

vati
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Offline AKSWulfe

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HiTech and Pyro: Lot's of money to be made!!!
« Reply #16 on: June 15, 2001, 01:18:00 PM »
WW2Ol is the wave of the future and the musket is still a viable part of any armed forces!    
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Offline Fury

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HiTech and Pyro: Lot's of money to be made!!!
« Reply #17 on: June 15, 2001, 02:31:00 PM »
Sounds good to me.

Two things to remember:

* Price.  The majority of people playing WWIIOL will not pay $30/month for any game.  Just my opinion.

* Ground war.  The majority of people playing WWIIOL are playing everything but the air war.  HTC has a long way to go on it's ground war if it wants to pull in the FPS-type masses.  Just my opinion.

HTC would need to make a serious business decision if they chose to turn focus away from MA-style to HA-style.

Offline Nifty

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« Reply #18 on: June 15, 2001, 03:24:00 PM »
Very interesting ideas, but the development time would be well over a year for the small outfit that HTC is.  Perhaps take some elements of your idea and work on them.  Remember, Aces High wasn't meant to be a full scale war simulation.  To turn it into one would take significant resources, both time and money.  Not to mention the vehicles you're suggesting be added.  Look how long it took for 1.07 to come out, with 3 planes and 2 new GVs.

Now, I'm not saying it shouldn't be considered, or that it's a bad idea.  It's a good idea and should be considered, but I wouldn't be getting hopes up that this is the direction AH would be going in any time in the forseeable future.  

Also, I don't see AH and WWIIOL competing directly.  The games are in two separate niches in the same theme.  WWIIOL attempts to combine everything into one game, while AH concentrates on the Air aspect first and foremost.  Some might leave for WWIIOL, but not many, IMO.  Most that want to play WWIIOL will do both, time permitting.
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Offline lazs1

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HiTech and Pyro: Lot's of money to be made!!!
« Reply #19 on: June 16, 2001, 08:44:00 AM »
buzz... I think your post is more interesting reading than the arena you describe would be fun.   Allied vs axis is custom made for stale, lopsided, boring drudge.

What you describe is basically limiting the planesets to only a few planes at a time and hoping that you can attract a bunch of guys interested in ground war and history.

Heck, with anything goes arena and maybe an RPS with a short early war, huge middle and short late war you have ten times the variety.   without variety people get bored and worse... they begin to get so good at doing the same things over and over against the same enemies that they wander off.

you could still have a ground war without the historical aspect.  We have it now.  improving it has nothing to do with axis vs allied.   I believe that Most people who log onto a multi player game are not interested in history so much as they are interested in having a good time.   The more historical the less of a good time for most.   Who wants to fight tigers in sherman's?   Who wants to fight 190's in spit 5's.   maybe some but.. Most want parity and variety i believe.

Sure... beef up the ground war add infantry and more vehicles and whatever.... Make the servers handle 1,000 players...that is still no excuse to go to the silly axis vs allied.   What do most people care that they are shooting an mg34 while the guy next to em on the same team is shooting a Thompson or Garrand or SMLE?   who cares if the green guys have a mixed bag of jeeps and tigers and T34's and so do the red guys?  Sure beats the alternative.

I believe that when the new wears off WWII online people will notice the lopsided nature of the weapons and either gang bang or just quit.   It's hard to balance anything historical  but it's even harder to get any kind of variety.
lazs

Offline DocFalconer1

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HiTech and Pyro: Lot's of money to be made!!!
« Reply #20 on: June 16, 2001, 09:10:00 AM »
<S> Excellent, well thought out post, buzzbait!  But don't forget adding ground targets, such as: towns, supply depots, railroads, trains, rail stations, capturable factories, truck convoys, bridges, roads, and sea convoys.

For those of you who don't want an HA, just look at the 1000+ members of WWIIOL!  That's how big the market is!  And this is the perfect time to transform AH into an HA; WWIIOL is unstable, has a small selection of planes and vehicles, and the framerate sucks.

Let's do a little math.  Ok, 1000 members @ 30 dollars/month yields $30,000!!!  That's $360,000 a year!!!  Look at the potential profitability of this setup, HTC!!!  Clearly AH has the potential to be the superior game...by turning it into an HA, WWIIOL will be doomed!!  And the sooner the better, since the makers of WWIIOL are working their a** off right now, trying to fix the errors!

Remember, it may take lots of time and money to make those changes, but as Reagan said, HTC can "grow its way out of trouble."

[ 06-16-2001: Message edited by: DocFalconer1 ]

Offline NHMadmax

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HiTech and Pyro: Lot's of money to be made!!!
« Reply #21 on: June 16, 2001, 09:14:00 AM »
Dont like the idea of restricted arean. But all the other stuff bring it on in thats what we need more stuff to kill and fly and drive.
need more stuff to bomb that impacts the game

 

Offline Dowding

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HiTech and Pyro: Lot's of money to be made!!!
« Reply #22 on: June 16, 2001, 12:23:00 PM »
Hmmm... interesting idea.

But it would seem that anyone who wanted to fly anything OTHER than the usual boring LW/US/RAF stuff would be well and truly left in the lurch. HTC would not have time to increase the Soviet, Japanese or Italian planeset - but hey why should that matter?
War! Never been so much fun. War! Never been so much fun! Go to your brother, Kill him with your gun, Leave him lying in his uniform, Dying in the sun.

Offline Buzzbait

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HiTech and Pyro: Lot's of money to be made!!!
« Reply #23 on: June 16, 2001, 03:51:00 PM »
S! Dowding

The Arena would not be dull and boring.  When people have clearly defined objectives, action focuses on those objectives and you get intense combat.  Because of the complexity of a historical arena, the interactions become much more compelling, simply because there are more options tactically.  Your opponent can succeed in multiple ways, and your choices to counter his moves are many.

For example, the Germans can destroy the Allied bridgehead by either:

1)  Conducting a land offensive which drives him back into the sea

2)  Cut his supply lines through an Air Offensive by destroying the convoys between Southhampton and the Artificial Harbours through air attacks.

3)  Do the same as 2) by destroying the Supply Convoys through Naval and Submarine attack.

4)  Protect your V1 launch sites well enough to allow sufficient numbers of them to be launched into the Allied ports of Southhampton and the Mulberry Harbours at Normandy to destroy the Port infrastructure.

Plus any number of other combinations of the above.

And the Allies would have as many options.

As far as aircraft choices, the Luftwaffe, U.S. and British planeset makes up by far the largest percentage of the existing AH aircraft stable.  Nearly all of those could be available.   And you could use the Italian aircraft too.  Because it was operationally possible for the Fascist Italian Air Force of Northern Italy to participate at Normandy if the German Command had deemed it imperative for them to do so.

Someone mentioned they wouldn't want to be fighting Tigers with Shermans.  To start the Tiger wouldn't be available in any large numbers.  The Sherman is definitely not as good a vehicle in a straight up fight in the open.  (Although a Sherman Firefly will punch a hole in any German Tank, its 17pdr gun was actually better than the 75mm high velocity the Panther was equipped with)  But Tank combat isn't just a question of bow to bow gunfights.  A Sherman is a lot faster than a Tiger.  The U.S. model with the Gyroscope was actually capable of firing on the run.  And the Sherman was equipped in the second half of the campaign with what was called a Rhinoceros bow attachment which allowed it to burst through the Hedgerows.  The German Tanks had no such device, and were restricted to the roads and any road entrances to the fields.  The U.S. tankers were able to head off cross country and to bypass and cutoff, or come up behind German Tanks.

Actually my personal favourite historical arena would be the Malta one, which had tremendous air/naval interactions, both at night and in the day.  But it doesn't have a ground aspect, unless it was extended into '43 with the fighting in Tunisia and the invasion of Sicily.  But those weren't the most interesting periods as far as the siege of Malta was concerned.

AH could also do a Okinawa HA almost as easily as a Normandy one.  Okinawa is a relatively small island, so the combat area would be manageable.  A lot of the aircraft exist already in AH, but you'd need to build quite a few Japanese planes, plus of course all their tanks and the U.S. models, plus various ship types.

History allows you to design a layer of complexity into a game.

  :D

Offline Dowding

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« Reply #24 on: June 16, 2001, 04:23:00 PM »
Don't get me wrong, I like your idea - but this sort of thing is already covered to a certain extent by the Multi-frame campaigns already run.

They involve the persistent world concept and historical, resource-limited, match-ups.

The only thing they are limited by is the current state of AH - there aren't V2 sites for example, and not many ground forces. But HTC is already working towards more targets and a more fleshed out planeset as far as I can see.

With more improvements/refinements to the multi-frame design, including new tools to help them run smoothly and efficiently (= more fun), 'things can only get better'.

The CM Corps is working continuously to improve these things.
War! Never been so much fun. War! Never been so much fun! Go to your brother, Kill him with your gun, Leave him lying in his uniform, Dying in the sun.

Offline lazs1

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HiTech and Pyro: Lot's of money to be made!!!
« Reply #25 on: June 17, 2001, 09:09:00 AM »
as you may have guessed... A lot of us like the air war.   A lot of us like the Pacific air war.  In an "historical" setting the only time there is any parity in the ETO in the air war is the Battle of Britan.   How many times can you do that one?   Unescorted B17's in daylight raids getting shot down in the 25% range?  Escorted B17's having the mustangs slaughter the LW?   Spit 5's against 190's (you could have mustang 1's they had a 2/1 k/d on 190's but there were only a couple hundred)?   Sure, I would like trains and troops and truks to strafe... I wouldn't mind doing some ground work on occassion but if I wanted to recreate history I would join one of those re-creation groups.   Historical fights were lopsided and unfair so far a a game goes.  The ordinance was allways lopsided.

All historical matchups do is remove variety and parity.  Any non historical matchups using the same resources will allways be 10 times better so far as parity and variety when compared to "historical"  If we had an HA right now I bet I wouldn't get to fly my Hog or F6 and I wouldn't get to kill niks and zekes except for rare occassions.  No thanks.

There is no advantage to HA except a percieved immersion.   Gameplay allways suffers.   I have too much imagination to ever believe that I am "re-creating" WWII... In fact.... I believe it is blasphemous.
lazs

Offline hazed-

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HiTech and Pyro: Lot's of money to be made!!!
« Reply #26 on: June 17, 2001, 10:07:00 AM »
laz you are of course totally correct in saying to call this or any other sim an accurate recreation of WW2 is blasphemy!   :D

but what we can do is mimick certain aspects but essensially once 'mimicked'(spelling?   :D) it will have a life of its own and become just another gameplay feature. if we add supply convoys and trains we may not have 'accurately' portrayed how the convoys worked but we would have a new target that would be fun to attack, will effect the enemy and should look great!.
I say to call it an historial arena would be wrong what it would be is a more complicated game with more choices of things to do.I can only imagine that as a good thing.I personally like the realism angle but im not a total 'anorak'   :D. I want challenge but concessions in detail. by that i dont mean irregular behaving craft like super speed tanks or super planes.I mean i dont want to spend all my time just flying, with no clipboard info or true engine management.
(sure give those that want it(real) a chance to have it, with a choice in the setup, much like auto takeoff.)
This is where i think HTC is very confusing in their direction.I understand they are attempting to create a very realistic FM and aircraft/weapon behaviour but at the same time they have allowed gamey aspects like tanks that can roll at 200mph, areas of the map that can be used to hide from veiw.An enjoyable but very simplistic game of base checkers.The 'war' is one part of the game that has seen very little added features.
I just think its about time HTC put something in that delivered something new again to the 'game' not just the simulation with another aircraft.The shore batteries were as far as i could tell a great new feature but then the map changed and they were not there! why use that islands map if its now out of date? baffled me.
As you know HTC are putting in new maps.You can see they are trying to address this sort of thing but like someone else pointed out they are a small development team and it will take time.
This suggestion(buzzbaits) doesnt have to be done all at once though!, but it would be better for everyone i think, if we knew this, or something similar, was the penultimate design for the game or the direction the programmers want to take.We could accept the longer development time then easily, knowing that the game we crave for is being attempted rather than second guessing and just hoping the game will come close to what we would like to see.
keep plugging buzzbait! <S>

[ 06-17-2001: Message edited by: hazed- ]

Offline DocFalconer1

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HiTech and Pyro: Lot's of money to be made!!!
« Reply #27 on: June 17, 2001, 01:55:00 PM »
Agreed, hazed.

Lazs: the main reason why the LW was shot outta the sky was because most of their experienced pilots were killed.

[ 06-17-2001: Message edited by: DocFalconer1 ]

Offline LtHans

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« Reply #28 on: June 17, 2001, 11:30:00 PM »
What your asking for, Buzzbait, is the virtual battlefield.

WW2 Online was supposed to be that, but it's in the hurt locker right now.  It technically has been released, but if you ask me right now it is actually the open beta, with player pre-paying for their CD keys.

I very much agree that Aces High could be a virtual battlefield light, or even a more hardcore virtual battlefield with Axis vs Allies.  The problem is I think Pyro and HiTech don't want to go that route.  I beleave their vision is to be flightsim only.  No diluting the air combat with neccessary ground or sea combat.  Topic specific simulations would work better than broad topic simulations, and are easier.  Mixing them, yet making them all work would bring down the quality in all the different branches.

I don't agree myself.  I think you could do it, but you would have to market the product that way.  Right now Aces High doesn't even do marketing, just word of mouth.  The word is that Aces High is a flightsim.

Hotseat and crew over at WarBirds 3 on the other hand, they've been vocal on the AGW forums and have specifically said that YES....WarBirds 3 is not going to be just airplanes.  It will not have infantry (too difficult to intigrate...just ask the WW2OL players), but it will have a full vehicle stable to play like tanks, artillery, submarines, aircraft carriers, all that.  Right now they only have 1 ground vehicle, another M-3/M-16 AA halftrack, but it is well done (better than the Aces High M-16 in my opinion).

WW2 Online probably will not cave.  I do think it will work, but they've got to do alot more work.  They've definetly got the head start over WB3 or AH, but it remains to be seen how long it will take them.

I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that Aces High will be a flightsim, will always be a flightsim, and will not try to get too deep into anything else other than as a side diversion once in awhile.  I don't want it to be, but I don't run things.

Hans.

Offline Buzzbait

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« Reply #29 on: June 18, 2001, 01:48:00 AM »
S! Lazs

No one, least of all I, says by the way, that the existing MA should be eliminated.  There you can fly your ahistorical plane and vehicle matchups as much as you want.  You guys have what you want, let us history buffs have ours.  I am suggesting AH should introduce a HA with a real detailed battlefield.  I think this would be a financial success for them.  But of course we, and they won't know unless they try it.

What I do know, is that a HORDE of people bought copies of WW2OL in hopes of getting just what I am suggesting.

                 Cheers Buzzbait  ;)