Whether you're "offended" that HT poked fun at some ridiculous aspect of your argument is irrelevent to whether it's true or false. The fact is that subscriptions dropped and gameplay quality fell with the rising numbers (past 500 or so) in a single arena. That you had fun means nothing... I have fun doing stuff that pretty much all other players find masochistic.. I fly into furballs with one of the very worst turning planes and try to stall fight my way out of it.. Zero margin of error. You and I might "know" what the essence of real dogfighting is, but we're certainly no guarantee of what the rest, the bulk of the players want. Like I said, no subscriptions to support AH, no AH. Business is business. I'm certainly not going to use my single pov of what's fun for me as representative of what all players should want.
Nope, not offended. Opps, your having fun being masochistic = no difference than my having fun. Although you might not have considered it, I merely used it as a example of game play back then. And each person who flew back then, as now, has their own reasons for flying the way they do along with why they like the game. If you think they like the game because you like the game you might be sadly mistaken. I also am not HiTech so I cannot state subscriptions dropped off and game quality fell due to rising numbers which is why I ask, not to seem argumentative. Did it really? Who left? Any reasons given? Did you happen to be around during the demise of DOS AW? Do you know why it went dead? It raises another question...had AW not closed due to EA buying and shutting it down would it still be up and running with the player base it had? There were many people flying there and there was no sign of it losing customers. However, it's demise gained many custmers for AH. Ergo;
DOS AW died
WB's was up
AOL PC beta was up and in force
AOL Mac beta got running and was up (If I remember right these were an 18 month contract)
Both went live although Mac was up live and running a little later
Concurrently the PC AW version for the internet began
AH began beta
EA bought out AW. In a short time they closed it.
Huge migration to AH began. In fact, we had 72 people who came over en masse. I already mentioned it. Many had not been flying as RL also had them doing other things. They came anyway. Some of those have since gone inactive. Internal issues within our squad also caused loss, not the game.
Does that mean there is an ebb and flow of players? Where is WB now? I know we've recently picked up some WB guys and welcome!
Is there a finite number of players at any given time? If we lose 2 but pick up 3 then lose 1 is that ebb and flow or loss players because of gameplay?
Put down the freakin violins for a minute. Your "side" of the argument got called a moron.. Maybe it's because there's so many morons on "your side", not because you're necessarily a moron yourself? HT makes his point by poking fun at your argument and you use that as an argument.. You know better than this.
I know HiTech doesn't consider any players morons. He also knows I'm so tough skinned he can call me anything he wants and it rolls off, like you...a duck
And I'm not brown noser BTW.. There's plenty of things I absolutely loathe about the game.
You're too inflexible.. The fact is that gameplay suffered from too many players crammed into a single arena. Titanic Tuesday is only as "good" as it is because it happens only once a week, instead of everyday. Even if we took your argument and went with it - that an unrestricted single arena was more fun for you - subscription numbers would still mean that AH was on the way to bankruptcy. Is that what you're arguing for?Brown nosers and morons, what a perfectly accurate depiction of reality.
I wasn't calling you a brown noser. :LOL It was for someone else....
I don't "loathe" anything about the game. Each fight brings it's own reward. Even HO dweebs and hordes. It's all part of the game.
I'm still trying to understand how gameplay suffered from too many players. HiTech said its we can handle 1000 without software changes. Hmmmm. software changes....growth? Limit growth? He did mention 200/country channel issues, didn't he? But not a software issue? I brought up ebb and flow of player base. Is there really a limit to the number of people that will come and play?
Is equipment a limit. If you look at WOW what does a player have to bring to the table to play? A $300 joystick setup? His computer is it? This game requires a committment to play a combat flight sim. Yet we have tank wars. And lots of folks play it. Do you have to have an expensive joystick setup to fight a tank battle? or run a bombing mission? Remember the contest to name the "new" game of total air battle. You get to start as a 2nd Looey? How many people did someone say it could handle? 1000? Yet I thought we'd still have other arenas. I wonder that we already have a ground war and bomber war along with our normal dogfighting, what marketing is happening to draw a tank war crowd? Yes, this is a flight combat game. But you could attract more since we already have it. No?
Have we reached the limit without software updates? If so then we have nothing more to say because that is HTC's decision to move forward or stay where they are as that is purely financial.
Personally I don't want to ever see anyone leave this game because of perceived notions of bad game play or not being able to undestand why the need for any arena caps. We have players who get frustrated from not progressing at a pace they'd like to. That's just a training issue, nothing more. We can fix that if they ask. Anyone can learn to avoid a HO or how to have a fun dogfight.
I'd like to see the game continue to grow with more and more players.
As I've read from HT himself, we could have lost AH? I have yet to hear a definitive why. Did 1000 people threaten to leave because they didn't like it? Why? It doesn't make sense to me. All I think most folks are asking for is 2+2 = 4 not we know what you want so don't try and tell us what you want.
Last thing. If they reached a limit no one can ever fault them for not taking what they have and continuing to add more to whats there for players to use. Look at the updates. The more stuff the more interesting and the more diverse the game becomes for exisitng and new players.
CM#2
