Author Topic: AvA "stats" 2010 - for Oldman  (Read 3124 times)

Offline Shane

  • Platinum Member
  • ******
  • Posts: 7630
AvA "stats" 2010 - for Oldman
« on: February 24, 2011, 10:49:00 AM »
While Lusche never bothered to give the AvA much of a glance (too podunk for him to bother with) he did at least include an interesting chart for AvA for 2010. It's the second picture of his initial post.

http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,306464.0.html

Taking a look at the graph that shows monthly "AvA activity"  during 2010, it shows some interesting peaks and valleys but in the end, it was back to where it was in Jan 2010.

I've been going thru the no icon vs icon issue and have seen the progression from limited no-icon below certain alts, to various limited friendly icon settings (Shifty insisted, "Yes I agree the friendly icons should be around 3k. There are going to be setups where teamwork is essential for survival the limited friendly icons almost makes this impossible."

This right there is a clear indication of the advantages friendly-only icons provide.

But, I'm not here to argue the no-icon setting, only to point to the graph Lusche did so you can make your own analysis of AvA activity over 2010 (which concides with the no-icon movement.)


Since i did not play during 2010, I'm interested in seeing how the "regulars" can explain that graph to me?

When did the no-icon at any alt become the norm?
Surrounded by suck and underwhelmed with mediocrity.
I'm always right, it just takes some poepl longer to come to that realization than others.
I'm not perfect, but I am closer to it than you are.
"...vox populi, vox dei..."  ~Alcuin ca. 798
Truth doesn't need exaggeration.

Offline gyrene81

  • Plutonium Member
  • *******
  • Posts: 11629
Re: AvA "stats" 2010 - for Oldman
« Reply #1 on: February 24, 2011, 10:55:46 AM »
march-april 2010
jarhed  
Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life. - Terry Pratchett

Offline Shane

  • Platinum Member
  • ******
  • Posts: 7630
Re: AvA "stats" 2010 - for Oldman
« Reply #2 on: February 24, 2011, 11:05:35 AM »
OK, that would explain the dip in attendance between March and August...

What was so special that resulted in the ginormus Sept spike, which tapered off in Oct and by Dec back to Jan levels?
Surrounded by suck and underwhelmed with mediocrity.
I'm always right, it just takes some poepl longer to come to that realization than others.
I'm not perfect, but I am closer to it than you are.
"...vox populi, vox dei..."  ~Alcuin ca. 798
Truth doesn't need exaggeration.

Offline gyrene81

  • Plutonium Member
  • *******
  • Posts: 11629
Re: AvA "stats" 2010 - for Oldman
« Reply #3 on: February 24, 2011, 11:10:33 AM »
one thing you're missing in your view is the available terrains and what the dev group was doing to make the setups more playable...a large part of last year was spent hashing out settings, determining optimal base setups, finding playable setups, etc...all of that contributed to the highs/lows...very little to do with the switch to no enemy icons...if it caused a 10% +/- difference i would be seriously surprised
jarhed  
Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life. - Terry Pratchett

Offline TequilaChaser

  • AH Training Corps - Retired
  • Plutonium Member
  • *******
  • Posts: 10173
      • The Damned - founded by Ptero in 1988
Re: AvA "stats" 2010 - for Oldman
« Reply #4 on: February 24, 2011, 11:11:51 AM »
Fighter Ace shut down and had an influx of FA people to AH..... FA shut down right there around August of 2010 was it not?

the AvsA Staff started tinkering with the icon settings around Jan/Feb of 2010 ( and a few times before ) but it went main stream around end of Feb to first of April...somewhere in there...

anyways.....

come fly the AvsA and have fun  :aok  :D


TC
"When one considers just what they should say to a new pilot who is logging in Aces High, the mind becomes confused in the complex maze of info it is necessary for the new player to know. All of it is important; most of it vital; and all of it just too much for one brain to absorb in 1-2 lessons" TC

Offline jimson

  • AvA Staff Member
  • Platinum Member
  • ******
  • Posts: 7202
      • The Axis vs Allies Arena
Re: AvA "stats" 2010 - for Oldman
« Reply #5 on: February 24, 2011, 11:27:24 AM »
Started around early March, here's the thread  

http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,284901.0.html

Also the twinrivr terrain saw it's debut early Sept.  That was a big draw.
« Last Edit: February 24, 2011, 11:34:16 AM by jimson »

Offline CAP1

  • Radioactive Member
  • *******
  • Posts: 22287
      • The Axis Vs Allies Arena
Re: AvA "stats" 2010 - for Oldman
« Reply #6 on: February 24, 2011, 11:47:02 AM »
OK, that would explain the dip in attendance between March and August...

What was so special that resulted in the ginormus Sept spike, which tapered off in Oct and by Dec back to Jan levels?

 i think that's around when i started coming in......and when i first came in there, is also around when i started spamming the forums with ava stuff.  when i started spamming, a couple other guys started doing the same...

 this arena has as mentioned before revitalized the game for me.

 as it is now, i won't fly another arena. if i log in and there's no one in the ava, i'll practice the bomb sight calibration. or i'll go de-ack a base. or i'll just fly around and look at one of usrangers incredible maps.

there was also the twin river map. it has destroyable bridges, and moving weather, including dust storms.

 
« Last Edit: February 24, 2011, 11:59:24 AM by CAP1 »
ingame 1LTCAP
80th FS "Headhunters"
S.A.P.P.- Secret Association Of P-38 Pilots (Lightning in a Bottle)

Offline NormH3

  • Nickel Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 379
      • We do good things!
Re: AvA "stats" 2010 - for Oldman
« Reply #7 on: February 24, 2011, 01:11:40 PM »
It wasn't the no icons that brought me here as my eyes aren't that good anyway. What did bring me here, and probably others, is the fact that I will never be in combat with the same aircraft that I am in. The name of this arena isn't "No bad guy icons" it's "Axis vs Allies". If they decided to turn bad guy icons back on, I would still continue to fly here for the more realistic opportunity to fly against aircraft that are indeed true enemy aircraft for that period. The only caveat that I see with this arena is that you may not get to fly in your favorite cartoon airplanes for a very long time.. (couP38gh). This may be another reason why activity drops off.

A thought occurred too me the other night that perhaps in the MA scenarios they should get rid of all the current skins and only have KNIGHT, BISHOP and ROOK skins.

Offline Oldman731

  • Plutonium Member
  • *******
  • Posts: 9418
Re: AvA "stats" 2010 - for Oldman
« Reply #8 on: February 24, 2011, 01:24:58 PM »
Since i did not play during 2010, I'm interested in seeing how the "regulars" can explain that graph to me?

When did the no-icon at any alt become the norm?


I can't explain graphs to anyone, because usually I don't understand them.  

First, if I read the chart correctly, it only implies the level of activity.  The orange line shows the number of individual pilots who logged into the arena during the month, and the blue line shows the total number of kills in the arena that month.  So if, for example, the same three pilots logged in every night of the month for tour 122, but only one night each during the month of tour 123, the orange line would show the same value (three), even though there were 90 pilot-days in tour 122 and three pilot-days in tour 123 (although presumably the total kill number would be higher for the first tour).  Am I right?  If I am, then this chart really wouldn't tell you which tours were virtually empty and which tours had sustained action, so long as people continue to check in once or twice a month.

Nevertheless, in an attempt to figure out what went on in 2010 I went back through the AvA Development and Staff forum posts to see if I could glean insight into what was going on that year and - more important - before.  

Judging from the posts, virtually all of 2010 was a rejuvenation period for the arena.  The most notable thing, for me, was that Jaeger, Shifty and Jimson all became very active with AvA in December 2009 - January 2010.  Each of these guys was very effective in getting his friends and/or squad members to try AvA out during that time, and those efforts essentially primed the AvA pump (looks sideways at Fork:  "Don't say it").  They were subsequently joined by more and more devoted rabble-rousers, as we see today.

Institution of no-icons was in March, 2010 (122 on the chart).  By then we were already getting decent-sized groups of people in the arena on a regular basis because of the proselytizing.  You see that quite a few new faces came in during March and April to try out the no icons settings.  Attendance of new people dropped during the summer - nothing new there - and skyrocketed in the fall with the introduction (in September - tour 128) of USRanger's Twin Rivers map, which has been a big draw ever since.  The chart suggests that there is a core group of regulars - and has been such a group - for the past year, and I think this is consistent with our own "anecdotal" senses.  The no icons setting, I believe, has maintained the interest of this group so that people don't just drift away to their old familiar squadrons/arenas.  In early 2010 it was common to log into the arena at 10 pm Eastern time and find no one.  That has not been so for some months now.

I would love to see this chart going back to 2008 and 2009, which were really tumbleweed years, and I'd like even more if there were a way to measure player hours per unit of time.

Don't know if those are answers to your questions, though.

- oldman

Offline Shane

  • Platinum Member
  • ******
  • Posts: 7630
Re: AvA "stats" 2010 - for Oldman
« Reply #9 on: February 24, 2011, 02:22:03 PM »
From what I understand, Lusche pulled the names/nbrs of players with any sortie during a time frame - doesn't matter if one person flew 1 sortie or 100, it counts as "1" for active player. Of course, some setups drew in more people than others, but again the graph is just a raw count of how many stuck their nose in the AvA.

I'd disagree with your asseetion nbrs dropped off in summer, because you actually see a big decline after no-icons became the norm, and then it picked up May-August (summer!) with the net result still indicating less activity than back in Jan/Feb.

Sept and Oct are the oddities in statistical terms, and could be attributed to the influx of FA and a few curious AHers, along with the new map as was pointed out.

It bottomed out in Nov, and Dec saw a slight increase (why? I dunno what was being offered here that month.)

Now looking at player activity (not kills) you'll see than Jan 2010 and Dec 2010 are very comparable, with there actually being slightly less at the end of the year as opposed to the beginning.

In effect what this map is indicating is that the no-icon experiment took a big hit on the AvA overall and it's just now "recovering." I'm not so sure I buy into the terrain-revisions argument as a reason for the decline.

Taking a quick look at Jan/Feb 2011, by looking at the rankings and finding the highest (lowest actually) ranked player on the page for fighter stats (which would exclude people who popped in once or twice and didn't fly a ftr sortie - altho the AvA bills itself as a mostly ftr arena, which it is) I see a 216 ranked guy in Jan and a 197 ranked in Feb which shows AvA seems to be flattening out for the time being, but still below Jan 2010 numbers.

My count could be off in the absence of a full ranking roster, tho'.

Anyone care to provide a different analysis?

You could do a similar search on prior years, and I'm sure Lusche could do it in his sleep in 5 mins, lol.

I'll PM him and see if he's willing to do 2008/2009 with a similar graph.


« Last Edit: February 24, 2011, 02:37:49 PM by Shane »
Surrounded by suck and underwhelmed with mediocrity.
I'm always right, it just takes some poepl longer to come to that realization than others.
I'm not perfect, but I am closer to it than you are.
"...vox populi, vox dei..."  ~Alcuin ca. 798
Truth doesn't need exaggeration.

Offline CAP1

  • Radioactive Member
  • *******
  • Posts: 22287
      • The Axis Vs Allies Arena
Re: AvA "stats" 2010 - for Oldman
« Reply #10 on: February 24, 2011, 02:26:02 PM »
i shouldn't go here, but i have to.

 it sounds like you're just trying another door to get icons back on in there? or to justify your desire for them?
ingame 1LTCAP
80th FS "Headhunters"
S.A.P.P.- Secret Association Of P-38 Pilots (Lightning in a Bottle)

Offline captain1ma

  • Aces High CM Staff
  • Plutonium Member
  • *******
  • Posts: 14384
      • JG54 website
Re: AvA "stats" 2010 - for Oldman
« Reply #11 on: February 24, 2011, 02:36:03 PM »
Is this thread going some where? the AVA is what it is. its Axis Vs Allies. doesn't matter how many people are in there. whether the player base rises or falls, its a fun arena. so lets just play the game and get on with it!

Offline TequilaChaser

  • AH Training Corps - Retired
  • Plutonium Member
  • *******
  • Posts: 10173
      • The Damned - founded by Ptero in 1988
Re: AvA "stats" 2010 - for Oldman
« Reply #12 on: February 24, 2011, 03:07:54 PM »
honsetly,
it looks like Shane and Oldman might be having a discussion, since the thread is titled AvA "stats" 2010 - for Oldman

this thread is not interfering with anyone, nor is it interfering with game play in the AvsA.......

Shane is just researching the icons/no icons, and he should have every right to, since he was not around and does not know what all was involved when the decision came down to do it.....

no need to make a mountian out of a mole hill when all I see is Shane discussing some stats with Oldman....

getting snappy about these threads is what drags everything down......... try and be civil will go a long way


see ya'll in the AvsA to have some fun  :aok

TC
"When one considers just what they should say to a new pilot who is logging in Aces High, the mind becomes confused in the complex maze of info it is necessary for the new player to know. All of it is important; most of it vital; and all of it just too much for one brain to absorb in 1-2 lessons" TC

Offline Shane

  • Platinum Member
  • ******
  • Posts: 7630
Re: AvA "stats" 2010 - for Oldman
« Reply #13 on: February 24, 2011, 03:14:55 PM »
i shouldn't go here, but i have to.

 it sounds like you're just trying another door to get icons back on in there? or to justify your desire for them?

Just asking for an honest assessment.  No icons won't drive me away - I do just as well with or without them. And to be honest my AvA stats would exceed my MA stats if you turned them on. If anything, no-icons give *you* an advantage over me. I'll allow you your crutch.  :aok

But...  looking at the numbers leads one to ask whether it has actually been better for AvA or not.

Are you saying that the AvA will never go back to icons?  Of course, you can't say that.  What will it take to get them turned back on - AvA becoming a ghost town again? Or admit that it might be an experiment that didn't quite pan out?

It's obvious to me there's a very small, exclusive group of people who *prefer* no-icons... which only reinforces the perception of AvA being a clique-ish place that the avergae player has no input in, despite the claim the AvA is made for and run by the players.

And again, *I* have no power or influence in the AvA settings and I'll either stick around or leave  - a *personal* choice, right?  Right? Just like *you* have the preference to turn off icons if you choose, for the "immersion" factor and all. My immersion factor is the plane matchups, but then I fly any and everything, not limiting myself to one or two ride, but again, that's a personal choice, right?

I'm asking for is an assessment of the claims I'm seeing about the AvA being healthy and growing because of no-icon setting... and the subjective opinions of a few people don't seem to jibe with the actual nbrs/trends I'm seeing presented for 2010.
Surrounded by suck and underwhelmed with mediocrity.
I'm always right, it just takes some poepl longer to come to that realization than others.
I'm not perfect, but I am closer to it than you are.
"...vox populi, vox dei..."  ~Alcuin ca. 798
Truth doesn't need exaggeration.

Offline JUGgler

  • Persona Non Grata
  • Silver Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 1269
Re: AvA "stats" 2010 - for Oldman
« Reply #14 on: February 24, 2011, 03:28:04 PM »
OK, that would explain the dip in attendance between March and August...

What was so special that resulted in the ginormus Sept spike, which tapered off in Oct and by Dec back to Jan levels?

Jet week I believe should explain the spike!



JUGgler
Army of Muppets