i think ct will be more inhabited once ah starts its advertising campaign to the sim audience not the gamers, since ah seems to be going in the sim direction now with all the talk of realism going on.
for the time ct is mainly a mini ma, this is not to bash the guys who host it, they try to run missions and such and have the gamey stuff turned off, like radar and such and ppl have a fit, even some ct regulars who think they know what realism is throw a wrench in the mix, realism is a touchy thing that takes alot of thinking to deam what is realistic in terms of a simulation, alot of the things we condsidered a simulation change with the advancement of technology.
Aces high is for the most part a very versatile simulation environment, its focus has been entertainment and gathering a wide range of audiences, which ma has succesfully garnered. Now with all the great work that the htc team has done the niche groups are being filled in. Lets face it ma will probably have the numbers when tod comes out, Ma from my stand point is not so much designed to apeal to everyone so much as to not piss everyone off past a certain point, when i played in ma we all had our gripes with it, but we stayed and had a good time since the good managed to out balance the stuff we didnt like.
Tod will fill the niche of the realism folks hopefully. As we have seen in the special event scenarios there are ppl who like participating in a relatively realistic setting, tho the numbers are still in favor of ma since you either like realism and structured environments or you dont, this limits the player base of special events and tod, but the rest of the players are off in ma.
In warbirds from what i hear they tried to apeal to all the audiences by having a ton of different types of rooms apealing to different ppls interests, It seems their main arena didnt have the pool they thought it did to pull from so it stagard and the biggest issue of all when it comes down to it, there were no one there to play in all these specialized arenas.
anyhoo, htc has done it right so far, and i know he is on top of things even if ppl complain alot aces high is still the number one flight combat sim out there in terms of how many ppl are playing it and how much profit its making. aces high is a buisiness succes, and we all have to cope with that if we want to be able to play in a mogg environment that has a solid roster.
Targetware, and other such endeavors are, from a buisiness stand point not even on the map in terms of buisiness succes, these types of games, no matter how apealing they are to the small groups of ppl that play em have to widen their audience by making alot of decisions that may piss off alot of the ppl who alredy play to gain more numbers, or at least chop up the player base to some extent for the greater group of players inhabiting their servers.
having a succesfull mogg that makes money is more of feat in the way of keeping ppl happy and not getting ppl to fight each other 0ver what they believe is the way to have fun. Or at least keeping them "seporate but equal"
im interested to see how one mogg can co exist with two big groups of ppl that believe in a different type of fun.
will aces high survive with a split player base?
game<---------------------------->simulation
or should sim enthusiasts shut up and head else where?