Originally posted by Grizzly
You have a great game, but I wonder about a few things.
You created a game with the objective of capturing bases. And to facilitate this you have provided limited means to defend these bases. It's difficult to hit anything with the anti-aircraft guns, which seem to suffer greatly from lag, so they become less affective with more action. You dummied up the bombers now so once again they have pinpoint accuracy from great altitudes. And arial defence is often futile because the enemy will eventually attack in massive force to overcome any ability to stop them.
The worse part, which I'm sure is aggravated by your reward for arena capture, is that the most affective means of capturing bases is to avoid or overcome enemy resistance. In real life this would be terrific, but in a game where the fun is fighting each other, this land grab mania is counter productive. After all, if you want a land grab game with little or no defensive capability, why not just design a land grab race game? Oh wait... you did.
I started online flight sims with AW4W, which was derived from the DOS version of AW. The numbers of the players were low and we were charged by the minute of the duration that we were logged on. It wasn't even the start of Internet at that time. We had to dial-up to Compuserve directly then log on. You can imagine how much we paid for the services back then...
anyway... I agree with Grizzly on this, especially during the hours when the number of players are low in the MA.
I think that the original concept of the map reset or let's term it "winning the war" was designed as an added bonus when AH had its beginnings. Back then the numbers in the MA was low and reset rarely happened. So, what did the players do then? Some wanted to fly for themselves, or some wanted to capture a base anyway, or some wanted to enjoy a furball, or fly in pairs or threes, etc etc etc... when the conditions are right, people got together to "win the war".
Now that we have more players in the MA, conditions have become different, the objective that people have have skewed towards mostly to "win the war". This is not to say that we cannot find furballs at all or cannot find good dog fights. However, it is distracting that "winning the war" seems to be the only objective today. This is the reason why the big maps were introduced in the first place, making it more... shall we say... challenging than it was on the small maps where a horde can over run a smaller country with relative ease.
This is the basis of the discussion and suggestions to make things otherwise should be based on this premesis rather than just say "it's a bad idea".
Originally posted by Grizzly
I humbly suggest you drop the arena capture initative and let the players set their own game objectives. I can have more fun fighting all night over a single base than swarming across the map grabbing bases by the dozen. Heck, players may as well capture bases offline if they don't want to fight for them. The advantage of online multiplayer games is that the players can provide the opposition, objectives and tactics. By providing the objective you are artificially limiting the game. Base capture is fine, but arena annihilation is simply disruptive.
I agree and I would suggest either a FighterTown as we saw it in the BigPac on AW where three bases (one base from each country was not capturable and if I remember correctly not destructible) or make only the bases in the center capturable as we saw it in AW4W or AW1.
Originally posted by Grizzly
I suggest you provide manned flak at the bases, similar to the 5" ship guns.
I think making parts of the map with indestrutible bases is more the solution than providing manned acks.
Originally posted by Grizzly
I suggest you make the bombers less accurate with altitude with bomb divergence. You don't have to make them go through the hastle of calibrating their bomb sights... just make the accuracy irratic, like it's supposed to be. The way it is now, they can hit pin point targets from 20K, but I can barely hit a fighter flying directly at my field gun.
Simulating inaccuracy by randomization is not what I would go for, because it would making the game not so fun for the bomber pilots. We play this game because we can get better as we practice. Randomization will kill this incentive. Rather, I would like to see more wind layers in the MA, where the bombardier will need to take into account.
Originally posted by Grizzly
The idea is competition. I like the competition of fighting over bases... but what we have is a competition in capturing bases the fastest.
I agree with this one...
