Arena Balance

[moto61]

Burn the ENY where I can fly what I want, and when I want and I'll re-open my account as will a few others I know.

I'm not gonna pay to be grounded though.

[Captain Virgil Hilts]

Originally posted by hitech
Currently having 2 different thoughts.

1 Go back to my original idea of having a wait time between flights based on country balance. This would put the same numbers in the air at one time.

2. Write the cant fly in this arena unless you changes sides.

3. Say screw it, turn off ENY and let everyone complain.

Any attempt at forcing balance will be met with much moaning, wailing, gnashing of teeth, and rending of garments.  

I'm becoming convinced that the majority does not want balance. I guess they want an easy button.

I'm not real sure that attempts to create or encourage balance, regardless of the intent, method, or belief in the cause, do not create more bitterness and resentment, making balance worse, instead of better. I don't swap sides, but I do log off most often if I can find a decent balanced fight of some sort. I'm not good enough to get kills if there are too many friendlies around anyway.

I am beginning to believe that the two late war arenas make balance worse. Possibly the "you can't fly HERE for THAT country" code MIGHT help that. I don't much care for the LW arenas anyway, although I do like flying a few of the later planes.

Perhaps one "open" arena (with no ENY, a 300 player cap, and no country cap) for one group and a "limited arena" with a 300 player cap and a 10% differential cap (maybe progressive percentage differential cap, according to overall numbers) would work. Or maybe that should read a "horde" arena and a "no horde" arena, respectively.

Hell, if you can figure out how to get everyone to complain, you probably have it close to right. I guess.

[Brooke]

Originally posted by hitech
Currently having 2 different thoughts.

1 Go back to my original idea of having a wait time between flights based on country balance. This would put the same numbers in the air at one time.

2. Write the cant fly in this arena unless you changes sides.

3. Say screw it, turn off ENY and let everyone complain.

Don't give up!  Side balance is good, and balancing sides is just a matter of finding the right factors to motivate decent balance.

I'd suggest having the ENY limit keep chugging away until no planes are available, which is effectively the "you can't fly until you change sides" method.  I'd put an explanation in the message box that pops up when a person tries to launch a plane over the ENY limit about why that's there and what's going on, something along the lines of:

"Planes under XX ENY are currently unavailable.  This is to help with side balance.  In extremely lopsided situations, this might result in no aircraft being available in your country.  You can get access to other aircraft by changing sides (use clipboard area o'club->change country)."

Also, one reason people might be reluctant to change sides is that they fear getting stuck and not being able to change back, or having the side they switch to then become the numbers-dominating side and not being able to switch again to the side with fewest numbers.

This can be solved by allowing country switches every so often, maybe such as allowing a country switch only after 1 hour (or 30 minutes or 15 minutes or whatever) subsequent to the previous country switch.

Also, right now, ENY limit hits the outnumbering side.  Perhaps the lowest-number side should get a benefit, like perk planes become progressively become cheaper until they are free.  Then there is positive feedback (positive for the low-number side) and negative feedback for the high-number side.  The low-number side could be flying around with free Tempests, F4U-1C's, say (although I'd be careful about making 262's free).

I think the system in place has merit -- it just needs tweaking toward stronger motivation for switching.

[TexInVa]

Originally posted by moto61
Burn the ENY where I can fly what I want, and when I want and I'll re-open my account as will a few others I know.

I'm not gonna pay to be grounded though.

Fly for the country with the fewest people.

[Flayed1]

And on the up side the #'s were almost perfectly balanced in orange last night.

[Platano]

Originally posted by Flayed1
And on the up side the #'s were almost perfectly balanced in orange last night.

The Huge FurbaLL over the 156/214 area (Center of map) in Orange was fun last night.....I kinda played more than I was planning too thus overslept and now im late ....

[Edbert]

Originally posted by LYNX
Two late war arenas inadvertently allow / promote lobsided arenas.  Give these guys TWO (2) full plane set arenas and they'll use them.  As I said above if one side is taking a beating some of those guys being beaten move to the other arena.  You can watch this happening.  Not rocket science. Not exaggeration.....fact.  With in no time you have one arena being dominated because players moved next door.  Then the next doors arena becomes dominated by quitters from the first.....fact.  It's self perpetuating.....fact.

I agree with much of this but you're mistaken as to the causal relationship here...you need to rephrase that a bit...it is not the two arenas that casue this, it is the players who CAUSE the imbalance...two arenas just make it easier for the players to cause the imbalance...it makes multiple easy-buttons for the players to push.

Originally posted by LYNX

Personally I like the upgraded, upgraded, upgrade.  Err, the latest upgrade.  It still retains the essence of the Big Fight for a base whilst adding a bit of diversity.  Allows a little free thinking by members, squads, missions or indeed, sides.  The single base capture is to restrictive in my opinion.  The only surprise you can mount is "How" and not "where"...... OOooppps  of topic.

I thought the same when I first saw it, but having played a few hours in two consecutive evenings (both around 9-11PM central time) all I saw a result of the newfound "freedom to operate" was a daisy chain of unbalanced base-taking. Even when teams were even (which they were NOT most of the evening) team A was walkin on team B while team B was pummeling team C and team C was rolling over team A. We still had large forces concentrated, but since most would rather be on the high side of a 3-5:1 fight there was little defensive actions going on (we did a little to push back the vulchers a few times but they'd come back even higher and with even more friends a few minutes later, got old pretty quick), but calls to defend go unheeded by the gree-dot-conga-line heading to base A999 where there's no red bardar to begin with.

I am not sure any of the mechanisms HTC can implement to encourage fairplay and an even playing field will do much if the players just want to take un(der)defended bases, but I'm looking forward to the efforts. So option 3 is the worst of them to me, the one that says "Say screw it, turn off ENY and let everyone complain."

[SlapShot]

Originally posted by Platano
"IMO HOing, driving la7's, or spits is like playing "madden 07" and leaving it on easy mode and winning every game 217-0 and playing it for hours on end every night."

-Slapshot on E-Z moders

For some reason, you got mixed up in that thread.

I could care less what anyone flys ... and have never chastised anyone for what they fly. As long as the guy is red ... and wants to fight ... I'm ready ... regardless of what they brought to the fight.

La-7s, N1Ks, HurriC, and Spits are 50cal fodder against my FM2 ... for the most part.

I worry less about what type of plane that I am fighting ... I worry more about who is behind the stick.

[Platano]

ok...



its still funny though

[Flayed1]

Edbert what time are you playing again??  I was on for several hours  about 4pm to 11:00pm mountain time and the #'s were good and the fronts seemed to be fine... The fronts were not being rolled though the knights managed to push farther into bish land but not without a fight..  On the west end bish were still working on rooks and slowly making progress.  And we managed to get a foothold on rook land down on the middle of the map and it was a good fight for it though we were having trouble advancing past that point.. It also looked like rooks were managing to push Knights back off of their land...

  Over all I saw good game play and really think we are close to a middle ground between forcing fights and sneaky play.

 You have to admit that even if there is/was a steam roll going on that I'm not seeing that it is taking much longer than befor to reset things.

[Edbert]

I don't get as much time as you do Flayed (wow 7 hours a night?!), there seems to be overlap...9-11 central is the time.

There were many bases where the local numerical superiority was overwhelming. When I logged on I was nit, they had a huge arena-numerical superiority at that moment (last time I looked was that moment). As well; they had multiple conga-lines of green dots headed into low red-darbar sectors.

Contacted the 3-4 other BKs on who were spread out in three countries (typical, like herding cats with these jokers). We all decided to head to bish. When I got to bish we saw two bases where our green line was headed into a low con sector. We decided to up at a base that was being overrun instead of joining the gang. We beat back the enemies (with help and over time) despite the vulchers and eventually chased  them to their own base. Then it all sorta dried up (those who had been attacking with numerical advantage went to find the other easy-button), so we went to defend a CV from incessant 110 attacks. Then had a nice evening furballing with Golfer and Creton (hell of a shot there with that tater!) over in a corner somewhere until waves of bumbers started showing up.

I had fun, not saying it sucked or threatening to quit, not really even complaining, but saw there was a great deal of locally unbalance play going on, for and against all sides. Only point I'm making is that this paradigm is WHAT THE PLAYERS WANT, so any countermeasures to this are going to have some degree of ineffectiveness.

[Flayed1]

Ok I get ya   But I would say this is still better than the old hide constantly way...  


 Oh and I'm usually on all day   I'm a stay at home dad and 3 of the 4 kids are in school. The wife has managed to keep us all but broke so I really don't have many options of things to do at the moment untill I can get the cash flow worked out

[BugsBunny]

Originally posted by hitech
Currently having 2 different thoughts.

1 Go back to my original idea of having a wait time between flights based on country balance. This would put the same numbers in the air at one time.

2. Write the cant fly in this arena unless you changes sides.

3. Say screw it, turn off ENY and let everyone complain.

I'd go with #3.  I think we over complicated the issue.  If everything goes back the way it was, we go back to the old complains.  But, we already know how to deal with them.  I think game play was a litle better before the latest changes.

Milk runners could do what they wanted where they wanted
Furballers could do what they wanted
Griffers could do what they liked
GVers were free to attack any base they felt like
More and bigger maps
etc

I think in the effort of trying to fix a problem that seemed Big, we created a bigger one.  Now the old one does not seem that bad, lol.  The arenas can stay split or be put back.  I dont think that has any effect on game play other than scoring.  ANy way, just my opinion

[BlauK]

Anouther idea:

5) If the biggest country has 100% more player than the smallest country, the smallest and 2nd smalles countries start seing each other green, and become ALLIED!
They could not capture or destroy each others objects, and they would have the killshooter enabled between them.

- When such imbalance occurs, there will be a SERVER: announcement of an alliance being formed after 5 minutes.
- When the biggest country again becomes smaller, e.g. only 90% bigger than the smallest country, there will be a 5 minute warning of the alliance being bisbanded.
- Also if during an alliance, the 2nd largest country becomes the larges, the smallest country will swicth alliance after a 5 minute warning.


This would affect only the major imbalances, but would work particularly on arenas with small amount of players.

[Charge]

What would cause the maps to rotate if the game is always balanced?

-C+