Noob wants to know why room limits...

[Doctahg]

are in place.  Seems most nights i try to get in the Orange room to join my squad mates but it becomes a hit an miss click fest trying to get in until the limit gets raised eventually.  What is up with this?  Not to mention it forces you to stay in it AWOL if you leave for a half hour or so cause you might lose a space.  I can guess it's to get people to go elsehwere but that is obviously not working.  people will not go fly ww1 planes if they want to fly with friends in the orange room.  I am sure they would just find another game if it bothered thme enough.  Can someone explain this to me?  is it a new feature?  What triggers the size increase?
TY
Doc

[Amaazee]

It depends on the amount of people in blue...I am sure Snailman will be here soon to explain.

[Doctahg]

Kind of a bummer..one hour trying to get in with my squad...oh well, might as well go to bed. Seems like a lousy deal.  If people dont want to fly in the blue room, they don't want to fly in the blue room.  AAND a bigger problem is the VOX..you can't ell anyone where you are or what you are doing OR talk them into the blue room cause you cannot communicate with them....I have enjhoyed my brief time with AH so far but I am startign to miss FA right now...;0

[macleod01]

Concerning Vox, You may not be able to talk to them, but you can still type. If you select the Squad channel (Red by default) then you can type and they will see it no matter what room they are in. This could be handy. If you have a small squad, maybe ask them to swap to Blue. Or you could go try out one of the other arenas. AVA for more realistic fights, Midwar for the majority of the planeset but no LW monsters, or for a huge challenge, why not try EW. Take a Spit 1 or Hurri 1 out for a spin, see if you like them.

AH has waaay more to offer than just the LWO

[AWwrgwy]

Kind of a bummer..one hour trying to get in with my squad...oh well, might as well go to bed. Seems like a lousy deal.  If people dont want to fly in the blue room, they don't want to fly in the blue room.  AAND a bigger problem is the VOX..you can't ell anyone where you are or what you are doing OR talk them into the blue room cause you cannot communicate with them....I have enjhoyed my brief time with AH so far but I am startign to miss FA right now...;0

It takes about 5 minutes to get into a full arena.  Or, your squad could switch arenas.  Obviously they don't want to fly with you.


For the original question, I've searched:

COndor06:

I would tend to see it as "you do not see the problem", regardless of what you think of the current solution.

The basic problem is all about the same thing you wish to promote, Having fun with friends.

My view is we had crossed a point where it became very difficult for a new person entering the game to make new friends.

Please do a search as for detailed resones I think this was so. But in a nut shell it amounts to ....

When you have to many people in 1 place pier presure no longer is a control on peoples behavior. Once pier pressure is no longer a control, people will start to exibit hostill behavior to eachother, (in esence overcrowding).

Because of the over crowding we had been forced to implement at lot of game changes (more police type force) to try to control the over crowding.

The arena became much less of a fun social place, then it had at other times.

The current change is an attempt at removing the over crowding and letting pier pressure back into the system.

With some time people will change there behavior back to a more social friendly enviorment.

If you understand the above, then the question becomes.
How do you spit a group of people while letting them maitain there current set of friends.

Our first attempt was as follows.

Lower arena caps,make arenas of slightly different game play (I.E EW/MW/LW) to see if people can be drawn off the old main population.

The first itteration drew some people to other arenas, but the force of wanting to go to the arena with the most players was to great. And hence to make 2 sustained 250 peek time arenas was not working, because no one wated to be the first into the empty arena.

While we contemplated a new solution we raised the caps back to 390. This still was not large enof to handle the people still wanting to go to the big arena.

So the current emplemtation is designed toward minimizing the time the 2nd arena is below critical mass.

I had hoped that also by always bumping the limit on the lower arena, people would relize that if the numbers were close to equal, the lower populated arena would be where they would next have the most people.

This at times keeps both arneas in a non full state, and hence, as you wish , you could always fly with your squad.

Also understand that  peoples behavior will only change over time. And in a few weeks it is well possible, that both arenas will allways have space to go play with your squad.


HiTech

New arena format Part 2 - Use this thread, don't open duplicates
« on: September 14, 2006, 12:41:06 PM »  

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm going to shut down the first thread due to its size and continue here.  I'll start off with a FAQ of sorts on some things that were brought up in the original thread.  Keep it civil please.


Why did you make this change?

We made this change because it will allow us to support an unlimited amount of players in a much healthier online environment that gives us better long-term growth.  The single MA has grown to the point of being unhealthy.  This is not a subjective evaluation, it is quantifiable and they are numbers that we look at every day.  It’s obvious that we simply cannot keep pumping more players into a single arena without hitting a stagnation point.  


Why are you doing this now?

There’s a convergence of factors such as current arena health, player mass, time of year and a couple of things in the pipeline that we believe will provide an influx of players.  Taken together, we believe this is the best time to make this transition.  


Is this being done for technical reasons?

No.  While some people on lower end machines may see some performance benefit, it’s not for technical reasons that the change is being made.  


This is going to fracture the community.

We disagree.  Communities grow and healthy growth requires structure.  Just packing in as many people as possible creates a slum, not a community.  We now have multiple neighborhoods in our community, but they are all connected.  


The caps need to be adjusted.

The cap numbers as well as the numbers of arenas will undergo adjustment as needed.  During the transition, we feel its important not to make them too large in order to overcome habit and herding behavior.  Things will change as we move through the transition period and people begin to regain their comfort level.


We need better tools to find or communicate with people across the different arenas.

We agree.  We have some host side changes that will be coming out shortly that will facilitate cross arena communication and hooking up with your squad mates and we’ll continue to develop more things that will help in this area.


Are you crazy?

No, we are rational and unemotional about this.  We don’t undertake a major change because we’re masochists; we make the change because we believe that it is ultimately what’s best for the game.  


Why didn’t you take a poll or announce it earlier?

It wouldn’t be useful to us for this change.  We know it’s going to be controversial.  The real test is not whether people think they’re going to like it or dislike it, it’s what happens after we make the transition and things are settled.  I didn’t like beer the first time I tried it but I’ve grown quite fond of it since then.  The transition is the worst part and we have no interest in dragging that out opening up a conflict of speculation before it even starts.  We ultimately have to do what we think is best for the game.
 
 Report to moderator    Logged  

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pyro
HiTech Creations

wrongway

[DMGOD]

So what was Snailman's "fix" for?

[macleod01]

Because under the new system, the Euro guys had no one to fly with. We would enter an arena with 20 people in. With the caps, we couldn't get in one arena, and the other was empty.
Snailmans fix was to make it that we could still get decent numbers

[The Fugitive]

The arena caps were put in place because the population in the game had gotten high enough that "slum like" attitude had stagnated the subscription rates....HTC wasn't gaining customers. HTC split the Main Arena into 2, but everyone would flock to one arena filling it to MAX (400) and the other 100 people would play in the sparsely populated Blue arena. HTC install "dynamic caps". As the population reaches 70% of its cap in Orange more space is opened in BLUE. As blue increases to that 70% make more room is opened in orange. This way BOTH arenas are populated more equally and more people have fun.

Lusche idea was the multiple arenas. Euro players were stuck splitting their smaller numbers across 2 arenas, with the new single map for Euro times they have better numbers in a single arena. Unfortunately, they can't run a single arena full time because of the "slum like" tendancies when the US brings in the bigger numbers so it split to 2 arenas again.

[dedhero]

are in place.  Seems most nights i try to get in the Orange room to join my squad mates but it becomes a hit an miss click fest trying to get in until the limit gets raised eventually.  What is up with this?  Not to mention it forces you to stay in it AWOL if you leave for a half hour or so cause you might lose a space.  I can guess it's to get people to go elsehwere but that is obviously not working.  people will not go fly ww1 planes if they want to fly with friends in the orange room.  I am sure they would just find another game if it bothered thme enough.  Can someone explain this to me?  is it a new feature?  What triggers the size increase?
TY
Doc

The underlined sentence makes you a part of the problem. You are not forced to stay afk, you do so of your own choice. Thus denying somebody else the chance to log into the arena if the cap limit has been met. This is not to say that a few minutes afk is a big deal, but half an hour is too long; especially if you're so concerned with not being able to get into said arena.

[Anaxogoras]

Seems most nights i try to get in the Orange room to join my squad mates

Find a squad that's willing to move to blue when someone can't make it to orange?

[guncrasher]

Find a squad that's willing to move to blue when someone can't make it to orange?

you guys are dorks.  he's a new guy and asked why the arena caps.  the pigs have a motto that no pig should fly alone, so if needed we will switch arena's.

doctahg, there's arena caps, because that's how ah likes to run its business. nothing more, nothing less.  dont listen to people who will blah, blah, toxic arena, blah, blah.  they just like to feel like they're in the loop so they repeat what was said before.  Most people dont believe the reasons ah gives, but see no point in arguing about it.  so forget about it.  if you cant get in, just let us know and we will switch.

semp

[Doctahg]

First off i had NO IDEA that if you couldn't see people's names in VOX that you could type to them anyways. I assumed....that you had to see them to be able to talk to them.
I tried off and on for an hour, I do have a life with 3 6yo's, to log in to no avail...
I know if I could reach my squad they would fly with me....but I wouldn't think of taking 10 guys away from what they were doing, having fun, anyways, just to fly with me, but that's just me..
Maybe staying logged in is part of the problem, but if i have to put someone to bed, or take them to the *potty* i am NOT gonna log out then fight to get back in.  If it's 200 of 350 in there yes i don, but if it's 200-200 I'll be back as quick as possible.  My $15 is just as valuable as the next person's.  If I am AFK it's for a valid reason..sometimes it can last longer than a few minutes for unexpected reasons...

So can I communicate with squadies in ALL arenas from the squad channel?  It would also be nice to see rosters from the main screen without entering..or is this possible to?  Would be nice to know who is flying where

I do have a better understanding of the situation now, but if this is the type of responses a new player gets to what i consider an important question, you wont be getting many more form me on this board.

[RTHolmes]

you can use your squad channel (red text) from the lobby before logging into an arena. you can also do a ".sr" command to bring up the squad roster - shows which arena your squaddies are in if they are online

I do have a better understanding of the situation now, but if this is the type of responses a new player gets to what i consider an important question, you wont be getting many more form me on this board.

just ignore the less helpful answers. the arena caps have been quite an emotive issue over the years, which of course you wouldnt know, hence some of the replies ...

[FLS]

Doctahg anyone may respond to this forum but you may ignore any rude or idiotic responses.  

Squad text is seen in any arena where your squad is established. Your CO has to establish the squad in the DA and TA for squad text to be seen there but if the squad is in one main arena it's automatically in all of the main arenas.

If you go to the lobby when you log in you can use the squad roster dot command .sr and get a list of every squad member in arenas where your squad is established.

When you look at the numbers in the arenas you are trying to get in, the numbers will not change until you log out and back in again.  Typically Blue will need 175 people for the Orange cap to jump from 200 to 300.

My experience with the cap system is that it works well and I can usually get in to a capped arena in a few minutes.

[Doctahg]

TY..
Last night may have been an abberation...ten minutes no luck..left for 10..back no luck...hour later no luck and no cap increase..Oh well!  At least now I know I can communicate with everyone.