The Sky Is Falling, The Future of Aces High...

[Kazaa]

Ghi's right. Reapers comment was funny.

[Noir]

Buuuuurn 

[Lusche]

Ghi's right.

Ghi's right.

There are many wrong claims & misinformations in it. For example "war can't be won" - he is repeating that phrase for years now, way before the new towns had been introduced. Despite the fact we had literally hundreds of map resets since then. The truth is, he started such rants right after the old war-win system (clobber on one country only) was changed - which simply just took away several resets per week (up to twice per day!) by hording the smallest country.

But he's one of those that never let any facts stay in the way of their "opinion".

[Kazaa]

Well his analogy's is something I agree with. For example, HiTech even said last year that the current city/strat system isn't working as intended, yet nothing has been done about it.

Aces High is still a 1000x better then its nearest rival.

[Lusche]

Aces High is still a 1000x better then its nearest rival.

Oh I fully agree... the question is: are those the main competitors anymore... or in other words: Does AH has to compete with them to gain new players, or with seemingly totally different games? The whole gaming market has changed a lot in the past 10 years, and so have the players and their motivations.
A player nowadays may not ask himself: "AH or Warbirds?"  But "WoT or one of those many MMORPG or one of the myriad of "free" browser games of all kinds or that strange WW2 plane game called AH?" .. if he's using a PC for gaming at all.

[MachFly]

Up to tour 80, we only had one single main arena. Then came the split, which gave us EW, MW and two LW arenas, and with that the caps came. Scoring was still for all main arenas combined, until that was split also (Tour 93)

cc ty

[kilo2]

To take a phrase from a friend when someone builds a better mouse trap bye bye aces high.

[kilo2]

Well his analogy's is something I agree with.

Aces High is still a 1000x better then its nearest rival.

Oh and nice avatar Kazaa 

[shiv]

I agree with Ghi about the strats. Before the change it was another more thing to do. You could catch guys milkrunning strats for perks, or milkrun it yourself. Now they're just irrelevant.

[1Boner]

Oh and nice avatar Kazaa 

Is that the girl from the "Daily Show"??

[Kazaa]

It's Olivia Munn, she's dressed up in a Chun Li costume.

[LCADolby]

More captivating...

I suggest the old strat system and zones would help in that respect, think of what's been lost.
 
There are no zone bases with importance to keep the strat in control of your own country anymore.
All those long frantic and intense battles are no longer around to save the zone base.
No Train with guns snaking across the landscape making NOE raiders nervous.
No frequent fighter and Bomber intercept missions over the strats that had fallen behind enemy lines.

[kilo2]

It's Olivia Munn, she's dressed up in a Chun Li costume.

You see here spread in maxim? she is smokin.

Back before the daily show she was a host on G4 used to watch it a big reason just to gawk at olivia munn.

[Lusche]

To get back to the original topic:

And I think now comes a snowball effect into play: People may tend to concentrate or shift their play time to a later time, just because there are relatively few players online. Just as a near empty EW or MW makes players chose a different arena. Now they log on, see 50 players and decide to come back later that day. This seems to be supported by the fact that the offpeak arena at euro prime time seems still to run quite well, in regards to player numbers.

The last time I had tracked a Friday's numbers was in last September, and this how it compares to today:



Just two snapshots, but it seems to support my theory that there has been a shift from early to late offhours.

[ROX]

To take a phrase from a friend when someone builds a better mouse trap bye bye aces high.

I don't think that HTC has much to worry about.

To "build the better mouse trap" you had better have a market for it big enough to either take the biggest slice of the pie.  Pretty much, HTC already has the whole pie.  The other games in this category are either a ghost town because of poor quality or are gone.  Someone would have to take a look at HTC's overall net worth and decide if it's worth half (or even all) of his pie.  I've seen the "estimated" worth and it would take twice that or more in R&D (much less the server farm, brick & mortar building plus emplyees) just to put out something far better.  In a nutshell, it would cost someone far, far, far more to try and redesign HTC's wheel and then hope you get his full pie...losing half of your R&D cash in the process.  And THAT assumes you have stolen 100% of his customers.  Not to mention needing luring away HTC coders (I believe D.A. does a big chunk of it anyway) with fatter paychecks to help re-create then drastically improve on the already existing "mouse trap."