BINGO - I Just Realized the Cause

[Hades55]

I dont think TOD will be like what many expect.....
You will have Just One Life.  At least with the same avatar.
Do you know what that means ?
Every known squad will be wiped out after the first week and the first deaths because of the confusion in the change of names.

After the first month no one will know who is the other.
Missions given to accomplise with military timing and passing between enmy fighters,ack,flak every time every mission with
Only One Life.

Now remember the chicken tourist flying at 20-30k of the known
uber:lol country.
They had to lose nothing, and they was continued to make tourism up @ 30k and lose their fun.

Imagine them flying in the 1 life enviroment

But also for the others it will be boring because almost everyone
will avoid fights because This Is The Nature of TOD.

Every one will return to the Hapy Anarchy Of MA.

[Midnight]

Originally posted by Grits
Ahhh, but as we have seen many many do not fly more than 1-2 planes, do not learn the rest, and have no desire to do so. Ironicly, these same folks are clamoring for ToD, which by definition will require that they know many planes intimately.

Lets say your squad is an "Historic" P-51D squad. What do you do from '42-'44 before the USAAF gets the '51? If you were smart, you would be learning the P-40E and the P-47D-11 now so you will be ready in ToD. Oh, but your an Historic P-51D squad, you dont even fly the P-51B, much less the P-40 or P-47.

Personally, I'm with Humble on this one. I'm not wishing for ToD to fail, I wish HT the best of luck, but I dont see it being a huge success for the reasons humble noted.

I already know enough about these planes and will be happy to fly them in TOD. In the MA, I want / demand / expect to fly the P-51D.

[Polaris]

And a midget wants to be tall.

Quit your complaining already.

[schizer]

Originally posted by Polaris
And a midget wants to be tall.

Quit your complaining already.

Would you complain if alll of a sudden say you cell phone provider said "ahh man we had too many people in your town sign up and it is taxing our system in that area. So  this is what were gonna do. You still pay us what you have been but now you can only use your cell phone when less people are using it in your area.  Sound fair?"  The bottom line is HTC is now limiting use of their product and still charging the same fee, a HUGE business mistake.  I plan on pulling my subscription unless this ENY #'s shchizz goes back to the way it was or at least doesnt limit what I can fly.

[hitech]

schizer: So under that same thought prossess should we be charging more every time we have added a new plane or feature?


HiTech

[Westy]

"You still pay us what you have been but now you can only use your cell phone when"


 Sorry but that is a horrible analogy and completely wrong.

 If your cellphone company provided you with 72 cellphones to use with your service plan but said that in heavily congested areas you could not use 5 of them then your analogy would have been even remotely applicable.

[Mister Fork]

Originally posted by hitech
schizer: So under that same thought prossess should we be charging more every time we have added a new plane or feature?

HiTech

The bottom line HiTech, if people don't like your product, they don't have to suscribe to it.  I think the number balancing is brilliant - it forces players to stop country hopping to bash a smaller numbered side.  You may, however, see the result of players who are country specific - they like flying Bishop, or Rook, or Knight and are hurt that by being loyal to a side, they are feeling this rule is just punishing them.

It's also because they are not looking at the bigger picture - balance.

Hitech - perhaps if you threw in larger gameplay factors such as attacking the fuel factory can knock down a countries fuel for the bases, or if you attack industry targets it limites the number of aircraft available would overshadow the # balancing?

[humble]

Originally posted by Midnight
I already know enough about these planes and will be happy to fly them in TOD. In the MA, I want / demand / expect to fly the P-51D.

You expect to fly the P-51D for the ROOKS...assuming that they are the country effected most by the "equalizer" then your left with a choice between flying ROOK or flying the D pony.

The issue here is one of leveling the playing field...obviously the plan is to encourage migration by restricting the plane set. Personally unless you reach a point where the only birds you can up are 202's & spit I's it really shouldn't matter what you have available. They will all get the job done reasonably well.

Still an arguement that simply boils down to "want/demand/expect" to have everything the way I want. Since others obviously "want/demand/expect" the balance issue to be addressed you have the current situation.

Why not rotate the squad to the side with the lowest #'s...?

[Polaris]

Originally posted by schizer
Would you complain if alll of a sudden say you cell phone provider said "ahh man we had too many people in your town sign up and it is taxing our system in that area. So  this is what were gonna do. You still pay us what you have been but now you can only use your cell phone when less people are using it in your area.  Sound fair?"  The bottom line is HTC is now limiting use of their product and still charging the same fee, a HUGE business mistake.  I plan on pulling my subscription unless this ENY #'s shchizz goes back to the way it was or at least doesnt limit what I can fly.

That analogy was so far off, it's not even worth a reply.

They're not limiting anything.  You can still fly your precious little plane.  YOU have chosen not to fly it.  Go ahead, Throw your little temper tantrum and pull your subscription.  Hope it makes you feel better.  You won't find a better flight sim.

[schizer]

Originally posted by Mister Fork
The bottom line HiTech, if people don't like your product, they don't have to suscribe to it.  I think the number balancing is brilliant - it forces players to stop country hopping to bash a smaller numbered side.  You may, however, see the result of players who are country specific - they like flying Bishop, or Rook, or Knight and are hurt that by being loyal to a side, they are feeling this rule is just punishing them.

It's also because they are not looking at the bigger picture - balance.

Hitech - perhaps if you threw in larger gameplay factors such as attacking the fuel factory can knock down a countries fuel for the bases, or if you attack industry targets it limites the number of aircraft available would overshadow the # balancing?

It has nothing to do with "country loyalty" I could care less about what side I am on, in the past 4 months I have switched probably 6-7 times. For my $14.99 I expect to fly what I want when I want, just like it has been for years.  I log on at X time for rooks and I might be able to fly say a P51D, 2 hours later I cant, so I log out. I come back later in the evening and the numbers have switched I have to switch to another country to fly the plane I want, then say 2 hours later that X amount of players have done the same thing, so now I have to go say the Nits.  In effect I have had to change countries three times in little over 6 hours.  Seems like alot of work to just fly what I want to.

The wah wah the sides are uneven crap is nothing but drivel, how many times in the past 4 years have the sides been uneven, too many to count.  So why all of a sudden is there an urgency to "balance" the sides.

[Midnight]

Originally posted by humble
Why not rotate the squad to the side with the lowest #'s...?

Because the side with the lowest numbers changes throughout the day or day of week. Tango and I have already stated that we would move the suqad to another country IF we were garunteed that in doing so we would always have the P-51D.

It's a logistics issue... You can't keep a team (squad) organized if the playing field (country) you are playing on is being changed all the time.

Example (again)
Squaddies 1 & 2 log in at 5:00 and bish are heavily outnumbered, so they switch there. They log out again at 6:00 when the Knights are now in the hole and Bish have too many players - hence squaddies 1 & 2 can't fly the P-51D now.

Squaddie 3 & 4 log in at 6:05 and switch to knights so they can fly the P-51D. They log out at 7:30

At 9:00, the whole squad logs in for squad night and want to fly as Rooks because now the Rooks are outnumbered and the P-51D is available. Squaddies 1 & 2 are stuck in Bish and Squaddies 3 & 4 are stuck in knights... Now the squad is in three countries. Sure, the ones in Rooks can switch, but that still leaves 2 squaddies stuck in another country.

You see the problem?

[humble]

A very valid point...

Would it be possible to alter the restrictions to always allow a player to rotate to the lowest #'d side? Or to have an "autoselect" that would automatically place you on lowest #'d team when you logged in (if you enabled it).

[Hyrax81st]

Originally posted by Grits
Ahhh, but as we have seen many many do not fly more than 1-2 planes, do not learn the rest, and have no desire to do so. Ironicly, these same folks are clamoring for ToD, which by definition will require that they know many planes intimately.

That's an amazing leap of logic that the people who prefer a particular plane for their squad ops in MA are not able/willing to fly in ToD. The two arenas are essentially two different games. Many of the complaints about plane restrictions in MA won't matter in ToD, because EVERYONE will have certain plane restrictions in ToD. No ?

I predict a bright future for ToD if only because it will be attractive to squads who like strategy as well as dogfights. If nothing else, maybe MA will become such a hostile playing environment for strategic operations that squads won't try to figure out how to balance sides in MA, they'll:

1. Move to ToD.
2. the overall numbers of online players will drop in MA.
3. The side balancing solution will become less painful in MA as it becomes more dogfight oriented and swapping countries becomes less of an issue.

Ultimately, this is about the pain (for some) of adapting to a more restrictive setup in MA. (and please don't quibble with me about the term restrictive.  I know I still have the choice to fly all the planes I want on a different side of the map. But everyone would have to agree that ALL of my previous choices are no longer available to me as I am now restricted under certain circumstances).  New people coming in to play AH2 will have no baggage with regard to this restriction or "how it used to be" -  they will get in and go to town. Whatever AH2 loses in people they will eventually gain back in new recruits who simply never knew any different. This will be the game they know.

Now... someone asked the question earlier in the thread. Is there any hint about when ToD may be expected ?

[Furious]

Originally posted by Midnight
...Endless furballs that cannot be won get boring after a while.

Really?

[dtango]

humble:

I had posed a similar concept question in another thread.  No one's replied to it yet though.  Also my thread regarding the auto-balancing sort of derived from thinking about this.  Here's a specific example of how it might be done at least to keep squadron cohesion?

With the current system, could safeguards be built in so that we don't lose squadron cohesion due to the spikiness of short term numbers and country shifts that gets members locked in countries away from their squadrons? E.g:

• AUTO COUNTRY SWITCH: 1st squad member goes online and is in country A. 2nd squad member who several hours before was in country B goes online 10 minutes later and is automatically switched to the country A to join the 1st squad member. Auto country switch would have to overide any country time limits.
• COUNTRY SWITCH VOTE: If there are multiple squad members online a squad member doesn't switch countries individually but only switches after a "squad switch vote" (like map votes or kick votes in FPS multiplayer games). On a successful vote all squad members online switch to the voted country by the system.
• VOTING PARAMETERS: Votes can only be issued in tower. Squad members flying can respond to votes. The system doesn't switch countries for the squad until all squad members are in the tower on a successful vote. All members already in tower waiting can't re-up until the last squad member still flying lands at which point they are all switched by the system to the new country.

Tango, XO
412th FS Braunco Mustangs