Change coming soon to arena capping methology.

[Lusche]

LOL!!! ahh you can keep it up, I'd be honored!  <S>

No, I am


It was just meant to be a place holder until Snailman is back in game... 

[BrownBaron]

Huh. Hitech Creations is making a change in their psuedo-scientific meth lab? (I assume that is what methology is, the study of meth)

[IrishOne]

     good call!

[1MADDOG1]

Huh. Hitech Creations is making a change in their psuedo-scientific meth lab? (I assume that is what methology is, the study of meth)

Just logged on and caught it too.   Dale needs to see the Nuns again for a spelling time out.

  M-E-T-H-O-D-O-L-O-G-Y

 

[JimmyC]

Hay lusche
Someone said I should give you a pickle
Enjoy

[Lusche]

yum-yum!

[Bruv119]

since both arenas will fill up more evenly with the new cap system (instead of 150+ people already sitting in orange when caps kick in), there should be no reason to whine. i.e. it wont be 210/100 and 10/150 anymore.

yes  our gripe was when the cap kicked in at 6pm our time right when everyone starts logging in you would see 200/100,   10/150,   This would usually take an hour or so to settle down.  Lusche was even saying that in his experiences recently it was taking even longer than that due to the dwindling player numbers.  

With the changes and the boot.  Everyone can take a well needed 15 minute break, make a cup of tea,  kiss their girlfriend and then when they come back to their computer the arenas will be capped evenly and work the way HTC originally intended.   130/200,  105/150.   If you want more chance of getting all your squaddies in the same arena select the B arena because A will fill up pretty much straight away.  Having said that the critical part of the dynamic cap system is getting 105 players in Blue because it raises the cap in Orange to 200.   Then a user who logs in it at this time should see the numbers I mentioned before.  He has a choice of going into either arena.

A slight 15 minute interruption to play whilst everyone settles into the new map (or the map from exactly the same time from the day before)  and the war continues!

I think it will provide better continuity and your Euro customers thank you for one arena until we decide it is nap time  

[Kazaa]

HiTech stated the off-peak arena would be closed at 3:00PM Central, which is 9:00PM Central European Time or CET. At this time, the max population of this arena would only be around 230 people; don't forget there would be a a lot less players during the euro day, just 70 in the morning to 140 mid afternoon. So, it would be a very bad idea to have a large map in the off-peak arena as these were made to support the old 800 player MA, a smaller map would be a wise choice.

 

I got the time conversion wrong, 3:00PM Central would be 9:00PM GMT and 10:00PM CET.

[Lusche]

An illustration:

The upper chart is showing the actual LW population numbers of Thursday, 14 Oct, a particularly ugly day. Time given is my local time, for the Brits it's 1 hour earlier.
Caps kicked in at 19:00 hours. LWO was basically locked for ~4 hours, while LWB was creeping along at ~50 players

The lower is how it may have looked with the upcoming system, switch point set at 3 pm central. (Pessimistically assuming that still most players will rush for LW arena at top of the list after the split)





I also think we may end up with different times for the switch point on weekdays vs weekends. I did a few computations like that one above for different days in my small database, and it seems that on weekends HTC might set the time point even earlier, to make it most fair to all sides of the Atlantic.
But of course, let's wait and see what happens over 1-2 weeks.

[bustr]

So does this mean we can get back to lying to each other about how many girls we bonked last weekend, how good our coutries beer is and how brillient our favorite ride is?

You euro gents gonna come back now and play with us......

[batch]

I dont typically have that many problems getting in when I want any time of day so the changes really dont matter to me that much.... however...... it seems a bit confusing to me as to how it really changes or improves anything other than for the EU players

if Im understanding the new system correctly it will have the exact same effect as simply pushing the cap time back 3 hours

Ill use my local times (which is same as AH local time) so I dont get myself confused in typing..... and Ill just use estimated numbers since none of us other than HTC have accurate numbers in front of us

current system:

11:00 =  125 LWO, 10 LWB
11:59 =   130 LWO, 15 LWB
noon = caps kick in (also around the time EU players are starting to log on)
12:30 = 130 LWO, 45 LWB (30 EU players have joined and are frustrated they cant get in LWO)
1:00 = 130 LWO, 45 LWB (EU players still frustrated becasue LWB numbers are low and LWO capped)
2:00 = 120 LWO, 90 LWB (EU players still frustrated becasue LWB numbers are low and LWO capped)
3:00 = 140 LWO, 106 LWB (caps are off for a few minutes and LWO starts building again, from here they build pretty evenly through the rest of the night)

new system (Ill use same numbers as above):

11:00 = 135 LWNEW
noon = no caps kicking in now, still 1 arena
12:30 = 175 LWNEW (EU players are happier with more to fight, US players no difference)
1:00 = 175 LWNEW (EU players still happy, US no difference)
2:00 = 210 LWNEW (EU players still happy, US no difffernce)
3:00 = LWNEW closes and LWO/LWB open with 200 cap...... now you will instantly have 200 LWO, 46 LWB...... which means it will take a much longer time for LWB to build any numbers to lift the cap in LWO..... which solves nothing in regards to cap complaints except for the EU players... it in fact makes it much worse for the US players......... now a US player who logs in @ 3:05 who might normally had to have waited 20 mins of the 3 click shuffle to get in LWO will now have to wait an hour or two before they can get in LWO

so as I said...... while it really doesnt matter to me either way .... if I cant get in to play where I want then I just log off and come back later.......... but Im seriously failing to understand how this is any different than simply leaving the 2 arena system in place and moving the cap times back by 3 hours (assuming the new caps will kick in at 200 as laid out in the other thread)

of course if the caps kick in at the current levels of 100 then sure the arenas will be fairly balanced at the 3:00 split....... but I think its pretty naive to think people are going to naturally balance the arenas if they have the option to all go in LWO...... if that were the case then there would rarely be a problem to begin with

having said all that (while I dont see the diffence from simply pushing the cap back), if it improves the game for a good number of people (I have no clue how many EU players there are but Im sure its a fair number), then its a good move...... I dont see how it could possibly make a difference one way or the other to US players.... but it still wont stop the US players from whining about caps because it doesnt help them in any way

[Lusche]

11:00 = 135 LWNEW
noon = no caps kicking in now, still 1 arena
12:30 = 175 LWNEW (EU players are happier with more to fight, US players no difference)
1:00 = 175 LWNEW (EU players still happy, US no difference)
2:00 = 210 LWNEW (EU players still happy, US no difffernce)
3:00 = LWNEW closes and LWO/LWB open with 200 cap...... now you will instantly have 200 LWO, 46 LWB......

Why are you assuming the new arenas are opening 200 cap?

[batch]

every day the following things will happen automatically:
- arena wide text warnings 30, 15, 10, 5, 3, 2, 1 minutes before shutdown
- arena will get shut down, all settings are saved: control of bases, position of CVs and so on.
- player will get booted the same way like on war resets: No loss of score or perk points
- 2 "nighttime" arenas will appear (carrying over settings from the night before) with 200 cap that will be dynamic from then on- sometime in the morning, the same goes other way round, nighttime arenas will get shut down and daytime arena will appear and load it's last "saved game"

as Hitech's original post referred questions about the system to this thread....... I took it from you

[Lusche]

as Hitech's original post referred questions about the system to this thread....... I took it from you

hehe.. that was just a initial concept by me, not the actual implementation by HTC. Furthermore, it was based on the arena numbers at that time, which had been higher.

And to clarify: This new system was never intended to get rid of the "I can't play where my squad is" problem. The only way to do that would be getting rid of the caps at all (which I would prefer ) or a big (& unrealistic) change in player behaviour.

It's just a try at minimizing the unwanted side effects of starting the caps. And yes, it's much more than just moving the time at which caps kick in. It's a result of shifting population dynamics over the last two years. If there had been no such change, I would never had come up with this system, I could (grudgingly) live with the relatively short time the action was down in both LW arenas. Just moving the starting time or setting a higher caps limit would not have worked.

[R 105]

WTG HTC and Lusche.