A rational discussion about AH gameplay

[Reynolds]

Originally posted by lazs2
HTC created a large toolbox... some who claim that they are WWII aficianados and battle of britan fans... would never get into a spit one in the old MA... they simply did not.   they weren't fans of WWII they were fans of the best planes in WWII with the biggest guns.

Those who really flew the early and slow planes against such "aficianados" knew how unfun it was.    Only something like the Hurri 2 with 4 monster cannons was much used.

I agree. In my whole time in the MA I have flown the Emil quite a bit, just because its a great plane, and only seen one other guy do the same, and he was excellent in it. I have seen Mako in a Murri I I beleive, or maybe it was a Spit I, but it was one of the two early war planes.

[Dichotomy]

Great post and nice work DT

[eagl]

I still think moving fields closer, creating more interesting terrain to fight in, and removing barriers to player fights such as heavy flak, will keep players more interested.  The arena should foster player interaction, period.  The fields are so far apart now, it takes a good 20 min to find a good fight.  There are few neat terrain features to draw players together to fight.  The flak often drives players away from areas where they would otherwise find people to fight.  All of this degrades gameplay because it discourages player vs. player interaction.

It makes the arena boring.

If I want to fly around enjoying the view, not seeing other players for 20 min at a time, and having AI push me away from places where I might encounter other players, I'll fire up second life.  I play AH to have player vs. player encounters, and anything that discourages that will keep me out of the game.  It's been a problem for a couple of years (IMHO) and it's even more obvious now that the arena is split into the three war periods.  There is no reason why 32 people in a mid-war arena shouldn't be fun, but when I logged in, it was a 20 minute flight to another empty field over flat featureless terrain, only to be beaten back by heavy flak as I approached the other field before I ever saw an enemy aircraft.  Oh joy.

What happened to the good old days when you could take off, set auto-climb at 5 deg nose high, and arrive at 10k over the enemy field and find 10 willing opponents battling in a deep canyon, on the side of a mountain, or in a volcano?  That was awesome.  Never find that nowadays, since a 5 deg climb will get you to the enemy field at 20k+ assuming the flak doesn't shoot you down en-route, over nearly featureless terrain.

Bring back the 4-cornered symmetrical WB 1.11 arena...  That was fun.  I never wandered around the arena looking for a fight back then, and I never worried about some AI shooting me down during a dogfight.  It was me and my friends vs. the other player and his friends, in an interesting terrain environment.  That rocked.  Why don't we still have an arena for players who just want to play at air combat?

[CHECKERS]

quote:
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Originally posted by FALCONWING

the second question is of course: What creates a long time customer?


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Community.


__________________
NoBaddy "NB"

"Ego is an anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity."


  " COMMUNITY " ! ..  

    Bob/CHECKERS

[hubsonfire]

Panzer kills come from camping. It's incredibly easy to rack up large numbers of kills in short periods of time, without having to do much more than click a button. In some setups, the spawns put you in range of other spawns, so there's no transit time, just click a button and shoot.

While that may technically be the ground war, it's really just spawn and vulch, rinse, repeat. I don't know if you can call that a tremendous growth in the ground war, or simply people being attracted to the easiest method of getting kills that the game currently offers.

By no means am I saying all kills, but I would wager that it is the source of a majority of kills, probably by a disturbing margin, but that last part is speculation only.

[Kev367th]

Originally posted by hubsonfire
Panzer kills come from camping. It's incredibly easy to rack up large numbers of kills in short periods of time, without having to do much more than click a button. In some setups, the spawns put you in range of other spawns, so there's no transit time, just click a button and shoot.

While that may technically be the ground war, it's really just spawn and vulch, rinse, repeat. I don't know if you can call that a tremendous growth in the ground war, or simply people being attracted to the easiest method of getting kills that the game currently offers.

You are overlooking the very few large maps (now gone) that had either a string of vbases or at least two next to each other. Led to good GV battles.

Also when the large forests were introduced to provide some cover making things a lot more interesting/surviveable (much easier to sneak up on a Tigger now).

No doubt a lot come from camping, but you have to add the above factors in also.

[FALCONWING]

Originally posted by FALCONWING

the second question is of course: What creates a long time customer?

 

Woot! 2 different pilots have alredy posted what i was thinking of!!!!

1.  Community

Absolutely!  we obviously have our own ideas of what community is...but suffice to say community is very important!

2.   Game play

Again i will refrain from going into what type is better or not but will instead try to stay with generalizations.

a: how easy is it to pickup and learn
b: how great a computer is needed to run it
c:  how expensive will it be after i buy extra equipment and pay monthly fee
d:  how quickly can i get into action
e:  how sustainable is the action
f:  how long does it take for me to get bored (or what keeps me from getting bored)

[Karnak]

I didn't fly the Spit Mk I in the MA very much, but it was often fun when I did.

I remember getting in a fight with a Bf109 in the middle of a furball and getting close enough to see that it was a Bf109E-4.  In the middle of a brawl of 1944/45 monsters a Spit I and 109E fought as though in a one v one.  I shot the 109E down with no interference from the others.


In another case I took off in a Spit I as the sole defender of a base with a large attack force coming in.  I shot down a Spit IX, La-7 and P-47D-40 before they got me.

[hitech]

FALCONWING: Congrats, you have just discoverd the 2  fundementals of online computer games.

How to implenent both conecepts is what pyro and I have doing since we began 12 years ago.

[EagleDNY]

They have a saying: there's lies, there's damn lies, and then there's statistics...

OK - first let me say that I appreciate all the data, and I find it interesting, but there are some assumptions that I can't agree are valid without a lot more information.  

First, that the number of kills in the MA has a direct correlation to the number of players since there are a number of factors that can (and probably have) thrown that data into a cocked hat.  The first thing that comes to my mind are the maps - when were big maps introduced?  When did we see the first FT and TT maps?    There are a fixed number of game hours per month - a map that increases or decreases the average time between kills simply by the close proximity of enemy bases or requiring a longer flying time to reach a furball would affect your data, as would a map that invites vehicle spawn camping or easily vulchable fields.  The introduction of such a map between two points on your graph would throw a lot of error into your data.

Another factor that might throw that kill data off was the introduction of the two weeks free promo.  When did that start?  How many two week wonders appeared, got shot down a lot, and then disappeared?  How about changes in flight models, cannon lethality, number of rounds carried (for us old Spit V drivers), introduction of new aircraft models (and the learning curve associated with them).  There's a lot of factors that you can see might affect those montly kill numbers besides just the raw membership.  

Something big must've happened in 2004, because between Dec 2003 and Jul 2004 there was almost a 1/3 drop in kills, which has taken nearly 3 years to fix now that the July 2006 kill number is finally back up to where July 2003 was.  

The real game growth data is at HTC - the number of paid memberships.  That is the real indicator, and that data we don't have.  

Again, I'm not trying to flame ya or anything, and I do appeciate seeing that data.  I'm just not sure that the kills data equates to membership as directly as you assume.  

EagleDNY
$.02

[EagleDNY]

The aircraft data charts are also interesting.  Regardless of other factors, it looks like the La-7, Niki, P-51, and whatever hi-end Spitfire is available have pretty much ruled the roost since the game began.

I assume the 109K-4 data has been merged with the old 109G-10 data.  I'm not sure that was a good idea.  I was a PT G-10 driver, but I don't tend to take up the K-4 since I can't get gondolas (or a single 20mm) any longer, and it just doesn't seem like the G-14 can compete against other late war rides.  I don't know how many other 109 drivers switched over to something else when the K-4 came out, but I do remember there was a lot of people complaining that the 109s had been neutered.  

There are plenty of factors that affect this data as well - changes in flight model, cannon lethality changes, etc.  I am still of the opinion that the Hispano Mk.II 20mm cannons are a bit more lethal and the German Mk.151s are a bit less lethal than they ought to be, especially given that the Germans were designing their cannons to blast bombers from the sky.  We did ROF testing that seemed to show that the Hispanos were shooting faster and the Mk.151s were shooting slower than was documented, but nothing ever came of it (other than a few accusations of luft-whining).  

I think the aircraft usage data shows that the arena splits were really a good idea.  Although we are still going to have some tweaking issues for a while, I think that it will all be for the best in the long run.

EagleDNY
$.02

[Mugzeee]

Phweeeww

More questions than answers!!!

Thanks for the head ache:huh

Seriously though.. THANKS! Very nice post and so far rational discussion has developed.

PS. Ross Perot  errr dtango for president.

[Kev367th]

Originally posted by EagleDNY
The aircraft data charts are also interesting.  Regardless of other factors, it looks like the La-7, Niki, P-51, and whatever hi-end Spitfire is available have pretty much ruled the roost since the game began.

Almost - last year the trend started to become to choose the Vc over the IX.
Once people realised that MA fight alts (ie down low) were more suited to the low alt Merlinned Vc (with it's uber boost) than the high alt Merlinned IX.
It was a given once the low alt Merlin XVI was introduced it would become the free Spit of choice, even though both it and the VIII share the same motor.
Human nature says XVI is higher than VIII so it must be a far better Spit.

[scottydawg]

Great post, dtango.

One question:

With the kill stats that you collected, did you include air-to-ground kill information (for bombers and attack)?  Not that it's crucial but if not, it might be more revealing as to bomber usage instead of just a2a stats..

Awesome article.

[dtango]

EagleDNY- There's another saying - statistics don't lie, people do.  And that is the problem.  The way that usually happens is through selection bias - when people look for data that confirms a predetermined belief while conveniently ignoring or dismissing the others.

A few points:

(1) I think 2 week free trials have been around since 2001.  (I want to say I may have even joined in 01 on a free 2-weeker).

(2) I accept the argument that the total kills/deaths may not indicate the total player base.  It seems like a reasonable proxy however.  If not player base it at least represents the amount of activity in the MA.  I'd be curious if HT would weigh in on the correlation between total kills/death as a proxy of playerbase population.

(3) The kill/deaths % stats are what they are and include the effects of map size changes, lethality change, flight model changes, ENY limitations etc.

(4) The % of total kill/death stats are independent of the amount of time it takes to get kills.  They show the relative change or lack there of between the distribution of kills among the different vehicles and planes no matter how fast or drawn out it takes to get kills.  It would be interesting to plot on the timeline when different maps were introduced and might give us a start at analyzing any correlation.

But let's just talk about big vs. small map adjustments just a bit.  For instance If it takes longer to find the fights for larger maps, how come the distribution of kills/deaths for the short-legged aircraft like the La-7 or the Spitfire hasn't changed?  Instead we see a drop in some of the longer-legged aircraft instead.  That would seem to indicate that map sizes haven't changed the game play dramatically.

(5) 03-04 drop was ~25% so let's be clear about that.  1/3 is exagerating the drop.  That was the biggest 6 month drop registered, but overall the drop was still in the +/- 25% range from Jul 02 on.  If I had to guess, I would theorize that might be due to the switch from AH1 to AH2 (it seems to correspond with the AH2 introduction Dec 03-Jan04).

If you believe there are holes in the data then by all means fill it in .  It's available.  I just didn't have the time to collect it for every month from Jul 2001 - 2006 (and I'm not sure HTC would be happy with me doing that since it's a drain on their SQL servers for all those queries!).

Tango, XO
412th FS Braunco Mustangs