Does HTC understand that the ENY thing has totally failed?

[Pongo]

I think that Levi hit it right on. It was the imediate neutering of the system after a huge number of people went knight that didnt work.
When it was first on, I recall being limited to > 30 eny with a 15% advantage or so. And that was on relitivley small numbers. Like 15 extra pilots total. Nothing like we have seen.

[pellik]

Originally posted by Dead Man Flying


Taking bases no longer serves as a means to initiate air combat between opposing sides but instead becomes the end.  The new means to that end becomes overwhelming, unstoppable numbers rapidly rolling over bases.  Air combat serves as a hindrance to that end rather than its logical offspring.

The ENY limiter cannot fix that aspect of gameplay, though it can stall and frustrate it a bit.

-- Todd/Leviathn [/B]

Well put there Levi. The "hordes" tend to fly in too intimidating a mannor for most pilots to fight against, and thus have nothing to do but capture bases. Everyone else then has a harder time finding a good fight and either gets bored and quits early or participates in the land grab themselves. Some people are all about land grab, and that's cool, but until you've really started to learn the ropes the current MA style doesn't allow for other styles of flying. A sharper ENY limiter makes attacking the hordes a bit easier, and the better pilots can more easily get in and bounce the hordes for 5-10 kills without so much difficulty. The ENY limiter can work just fine, but it needs to work in symbiosis with good pilots. Want a successfully balanced MA? Train up the n00bs.

-pellik

[hitech]

Just about every suggestion I've seen to help the MA situation seems to have one thing in commor: it attacks the problem locally instead of globally. That is, ENY and Perks are based on the total number of planes in the MA - but the problems really occur over one or two fields, or against one front.

And that pretty much sums up why I don't care for most of the suggestions I have seen. Because they are trying to solve a non existing problem.  Or just wanting to put the problem on someone else as in the case of midnights current suggestion. He just wan'ts to put the balance on ordance usage of field capture, it in no way address the fighter balance when countries are out of balance.

It is my view that local numbers superiorty is part of the game and a choice that all sides can make equaly. It realy isn't a problem.

[Pongo]

That view isnt supported by what happens in your game.
The only choice is will you leave a whole area undefended or not. Is that what you meant? When you locked tight in a battle on any front and the signifiganlty supperior numbered side pulls out 40 guys to visit another area your choice is what will you abandon.  They can still leave you out numbered localy and do that.
So there is no choice. The out numbered side doenst chose to be so. If they try the same tactic as you are I assume sugesting they must abandon some area to do so. And the other side can up 20 guys to meet your 40 and tie you up wich of course hurts your other fronts worse.
Its self evident.

Its just hillarios that having finally tried something you made it worse by tinkering with it too soon.

Everyone has ignored the thing on its new lower settings that were put in within days of the system being implemented.

[Midnight]

Originally posted by hitech
Or just wanting to put the problem on someone else as in the case of midnights current suggestion. He just wan'ts to put the balance on ordance usage of field capture, it in no way address the fighter balance when countries are out of balance.

I have also made the suggestion that each player is limited to the number of lives they get per hour, or the number of planes they can get in an hour. What I am asking for is limiters that are based on individual player performance and not some factor such as how many people are playing, which other players have zero control over.

The 412th has tried to just switch countries to get by, and even decided to make a long-term switch to knights (who were complaining about the numbers quite a lot) After being in knights for a week, we found that we had to switch to rooks again. There's no fun in the ENY limiter for those of us who want to fly the P-51D. If the P-51D wasn't effected by ENY so badly, I would probably not even care anymore. I think it's obvious that I don't fly the P-51D for perk points.

[DoKGonZo]

Originally posted by hitech
And that pretty much sums up why I don't care for most of the suggestions I have seen. Because they are trying to solve a non existing problem.  Or just wanting to put the problem on someone else as in the case of midnights current suggestion. He just wan'ts to put the balance on ordance usage of field capture, it in no way address the fighter balance when countries are out of balance.

It is my view that local numbers superiorty is part of the game and a choice that all sides can make equaly. It realy isn't a problem.

It's the excessive local superiority that's the problem.

[J_A_B]

"After being in knights for a week, we found that we had to switch to rooks again. There's no fun in the ENY limiter for those of us who want to fly the P-51D."

Midnight--

I would venture to suggest that AH is no longer a game intended to appeal to people such as you and myself.   We seem to have fallen through the cracks.

J_A_B

[Overlag]

a small airfield with 3 hangers should be able to up 50 planes........

id all be one for each field having a "upping" limit, it wouldnt totaly address the problem of  local superiority but it would mean the side wanting  local superiority  would need to plan....IE upping from more fields, linking up THEN flying to target etc.. Kinda like what they did in real life

i also think if hangers go down the upping limit should decrease. lets say 30 planes for a small airfield with 3 hangers, but with only 1 hanger it only has 10????? Just an example. or it could be a percentage of the whole side?

[Pongo]

Overlag is playing some other game if he didnt see the routine 2 to 1 advantage the knights carried for over 2 weeks. Peaking often at 3 to 1. Now its settle down to a managable 20-30% advantage with peaks of 50%.
I imagine he is a knight. For some strange reason knights didnt see all that green. They blocked out the sun with green icons but never noticed or thought it mattered.

When the "result" of the eny system was a 2 to 1 numerical advantage for the knights IT HAD FAILED Now we are getting close to a normal ratio that the arena has ususally had (but drove the knights to whine so hard that ENY was implemented).
If there is a reasonable amount of activity between the three countries its a great game and the thing only goes out of kilter when the country with an extra 25 people makes perfect use of that advantage. But 20% is not enought to blanket domniate with dweeb tactics over the whole front. 50% makes that easy. By the time the numbers get to 2 to 1 this game has collapsed.

That was the effect of ENY for  a few weeks there.

[DoKGonZo]

... continuing on ...

It's also the multiple instances of excessive local superiority which occur when one country has almost as many people as the other two combined. In the Horde Age, that usually means they throw most of their people against the smallest or closest-to-reset country (which are usually the same). The middle country usually follows suit because they'd rather pick on a small-fry than run into the Horde.

The end result is a whole lot of people log in and see no point in flying due to odds. Or a whole lot of people log into the biggest country and can't fly the plane they want.


The more I think about it the more I like the abstraction of "forward" and "rearward" bases. Rearward bases have heavy bombers, indestructable barracks, and all fighters available. Forward bases have strict ENY and/or launch restrictions (tied to the odds and number of bases held), and no heavies (or maybe just no formations available). That gets rid of a lot of NOE heavies, it throttles the conveyor belt without removing freedom of choice in what to fly. The current trick of porking troops 3 bases deep so that the map stagnates for hours also goes away.

It also introduces some strategy. Consider that an invasion from a CV only gains a foothold - you can't launch heavies (or formations thereof ... depending on how you break it down) until you expand the beachhead and have a rearward base. When The Horde is up, they'll need to coordinate between mutliple bases to affect a capture - which will likely disipate the Horde. As long as the forward fields ENY/lauch included bases held as well as odds in the calculation, then countries fighting back from a deficit wouldn't be penalized right away during their counterattack.

If you wanted to have the ENY/launch at forward bases tied to global odds ... fine ... I don't happen to agree ... but I ain't religious on it either.


I don't know ... maybe things finally are evening up. Last night was the first night all week that the odds didn't suck moose nads and it was worth flying. Lots of big attacks from all sides - Bish reset the Knits even. The big difference? All sides were within about 20% of each other's numbers. One side didn't have the excessive numbers advantage I mentioned at the outset.

[g00b]

I think the ENY thing needs to be STRENGTHENED! Widen the perk modifiers even further. And make the top 4 low cost perk planes. And add more expensive desireable perk planes. Give people a reason to switch countries or take a weaker plane.

g00b

[Overlag]

Originally posted by Pongo
Overlag is playing some other game if he didnt see the routine 2 to 1 advantage the knights carried for over 2 weeks. Peaking often at 3 to 1. Now its settle down to a managable 20-30% advantage with peaks of 50%.
I imagine he is a knight. For some strange reason knights didnt see all that green. They blocked out the sun with green icons but never noticed or thought it mattered.

When the "result" of the eny system was a 2 to 1 numerical advantage for the knights IT HAD FAILED Now we are getting close to a normal ratio that the arena has ususally had (but drove the knights to whine so hard that ENY was implemented).
If there is a reasonable amount of activity between the three countries its a great game and the thing only goes out of kilter when the country with an extra 25 people makes perfect use of that advantage. But 20% is not enought to blanket domniate with dweeb tactics over the whole front. 50% makes that easy. By the time the numbers get to 2 to 1 this game has collapsed.

That was the effect of ENY for  a few weeks there.

since when have knits had 2:1 or 3:1 advantage

ive been playing between (not non-stop) the hours of 11am till 6am (UKtime) during the last few months and ive seen nothing of the sort.

[Midnight]

Originally posted by Overlag
since when have knits had 2:1 or 3:1 advantage

I don't know about 2:1 or 3:1, but I can tell you that we (the 412th) had to switch back over to rooks (from knights) a couple times because the ENY was up over 10. This was on at least 2 occasions.

[Pongo]

Ive allready said when.

[Overlag]

Originally posted by Pongo
Ive allready said when.

you must be playing a different game game then. ive yet to see sides like 300:100:100 or 200:100:100 which you imply