Are there enough players?

[DREDIOCK]

Now with that said, I don't think making strats negatively impact the enemy is a good idea.  Look at pretty much any online game, it is virtually impossible for something bad to happen to you anymore.  In PVP games, about the only penalty people are willing to put up with is dying and having to respawn.  Anything more than that generates ill will.


Wiley.

Couldnt disagree more. For one thing. This isnt just any online game and has very little in common with other online games. As anyone who played AW could tell you. Not only did strat targets work. But they worked very very well.
As for ill will
As hitech himself said. The object is to pi$$ the other guy off.
They will tolerate it because they can retaliate in kind.

The idea of having strat targets isnt to outright cripple the other side outright. But to have just enough effect in selected areas to make defending such targets preferable.

In Aw it was the spit factory. And HQ Radar. Even though the other side only lost spits for 15 min. It was enough to make people want to defend against it.
Were there howls? sure. But your going to have that anyway. And as it was said in the movie "Flyboys" when it was complained about how an opponent attacked "Your the man in the plane. Your the man with the guns." We have the same howls here. Dar goes down and people complain that dar is down, or hangars. but your the one in the cartoon airplane that can stop it. And if you dont. Then who's fault is it really?
Plus you have every opportunity to respond in kind. Its neither the game designers nor other guys fault if you dont take advantage of that.

You really going to try to tell me that the loss of say specific high eny planes, or GVs for 15 minutes is going to have such a detrimental effect of ill will that the game cant handle it?

[hitech]

Couldnt disagree more. For one thing. This isnt just any online game and has very little in common with other online games. As anyone who played AW could tell you. Not only did strat targets work. But they worked very very well.

I played,and they sucked and worked very poorly.

HiTech

[DREDIOCK]

there is a reason there are only 3 countries and that all countries opposing your county are the same color. 

 

Actually you can set the individual countries to be whatever color you want.
For example. For the longest time I had bish set as orange and the rooks set as yellow...for obvious reasons  

Now I just have them all set as red cause...well a turd is a turd.  

[DREDIOCK]

I played,and they sucked and worked very poorly.

HiTech

We couldnt possibly disagree more then. And I know more then quite a few who feel the same. Personally and to be completely honest. I think the current system rather sucks as is rather evident by the reduced missions to strats.

But...between the two of us. Your the only one here with the power to make that kind of change in implementation and between the two of us, allowed a proverbial gun here. So...

[Hoff]

Well, looking at how peoples' behavior is currently with the current score stats, I think the extrapolation is pretty simple.  The majority like to win with relatively little investment of effort.  Being on the winningest side would likely be seen as a good way to do that.  When it comes to online games, expecting the worst possible outcome is rarely wrong. <g>

Hoff-  Most if not all of the stuff you've listed has been tried in one form or another since the days of AW and failed spectacularly for one reason or another.  Hence the backlash when you suggest them.  Your suggestions are fresh to you, but are less so to most people who frequent the boards.

I could be wrong, but I think some of those ideas might be worth a billionth look at some point.  The people who are coming into the game and are available to be attracted into the game are quite a bit more used to large numbers and just being one of the many faces in the crowd than a few years ago.  I personally don't think large numbers is the deterrant it may have been when the arenas were split those many years ago.

Now with that said, I don't think limiting peoples' targets or making strats negatively impact the enemy is a good idea.  Look at pretty much any online game, it is virtually impossible for something bad to happen to you anymore.  In PVP games, about the only penalty people are willing to put up with is dying and having to respawn.  Anything more than that generates ill will.

The limiting of the available targets was apparently tried here a few years ago and was somewhere between a colossal and gargantuan failure.  While I personally like the idea of funneling more people into a smaller area, a lot of people who play want the freedom to start something small at a place of their choosing on the map.  I just don't see it working.

Wiley.

For most of the population of MMO players in my generation that is true. For the ones that would play a game like this though, that couldn't be further from the truth. I loved EVE online, where if you died, you lost your stuff, period. You could be attacked pretty much anywhere by anyone too. Consequences for the most part were doled out by the players, not game mechanics. So seeing strategic targets that actually have big consequences if you lose them is very intriguing to me.

Currently there are only two games on the market that have a large persistent war going on in a single server. World War 2 Online and Planetside. Planetside is dead (and actually had 2 U.S. and 1 EU server, but not caps) and World War 2 Online is sparsely populated from what I can tell. The question that needs to be answered is this: Is Aces High trying to be a persistent war simulation or simply a furball game with nearly meaningless objective based gameplay?

[Guppy35]

Note what you wrote in your last paragraph at the beginning, and then answer your own question about what AH is and isn't

[Wiley]

You really going to try to tell me that the loss of say specific high eny planes, or GVs for 15 minutes is going to have such a detrimental effect of ill will that the game cant handle it?

Yup.  Look what happens when there's a good fight going and the fun police drop the hangars.  It's only for 15 minutes, right?  Yet the vitriol flows.  And that's only at one base.  Now imagine that effect being applied to the entire map.

For most of the population of MMO players in my generation that is true. For the ones that would play a game like this though, that couldn't be further from the truth. I loved EVE online, where if you died, you lost your stuff, period. You could be attacked pretty much anywhere by anyone too. Consequences for the most part were doled out by the players, not game mechanics. So seeing strategic targets that actually have big consequences if you lose them is very intriguing to me.

EVE's an oddball, as from what I've seen, people who play that have a helluva masochistic streak.  You can make the case people here are similar, but I think people who play EVE will put up with more than any other group of gamers out there.  I wish there were more games like that, as it would be nice to have some consequences to gameplay, but I just don't see it happening here.  You can see what happens here once one side gets the upper hand over an enemy base, it's rare the people from the side that was pushed back don't leave for someplace else.  It happens occasionally, and when it does it's beautiful, but it's not that common.

The question that needs to be answered is this: Is Aces High trying to be a persistent war simulation or simply a furball game with nearly meaningless objective based gameplay?

...Why?  It's 'strategy lite', a bit better than a straight up capture the flag style game, but I think part of the problem with a persistent war single server setup is people will have a tendency to burn out on it if that's the only option.  Otherwise, the AvA arena would be the hotspot in this game.

Wiley.

[Urchin]

I think Aces High is TRYING to be the best combat flight sim on the market.

I also think that what the majority of the players WANT (or, in a nod to Hitech, THINK they want) is a persistent "war simulation".

The two aren't mutually exclusive, but for the majority of the player base they may as well be.

Really the only way there can be a "war" (with as much of that as is compatible with a computer game) is if there was no communication between teams (to maximize dehumanization of the "enemy"), and meaningful objectives (which the MA actually DOES provide, just at the cost of the aim of being a combat flight simulator), and some penalty for death.

I honestly do feel that AH's future lies in the direction of a combined arms "war sim". Of course, it isn't my game .

[The Fugitive]

We couldnt possibly disagree more then. And I know more then quite a few who feel the same. Personally and to be completely honest. I think the current system rather sucks as is rather evident by the reduced missions to strats.

But...between the two of us. Your the only one here with the power to make that kind of change in implementation and between the two of us, allowed a proverbial gun here. So...

I think the reduced missions to strat are due to player mentality. Todays player is looking for the quick win, be that HO for a fast kill, or horde base after base to win the war that is what most of the players do and so I must think "want". Taking out strat has nothing to do with grabbing bases espescially if you can just roll over most of them in under 10 minutes anyway.... why bother flying all the way out to the start?

For most of the population of MMO players in my generation that is true. For the ones that would play a game like this though, that couldn't be further from the truth. I loved EVE online, where if you died, you lost your stuff, period. You could be attacked pretty much anywhere by anyone too. Consequences for the most part were doled out by the players, not game mechanics. So seeing strategic targets that actually have big consequences if you lose them is very intriguing to me.

Currently there are only two games on the market that have a large persistent war going on in a single server. World War 2 Online and Planetside. Planetside is dead (and actually had 2 U.S. and 1 EU server, but not caps) and World War 2 Online is sparsely populated from what I can tell. The question that needs to be answered is this: Is Aces High trying to be a persistent war simulation or simply a furball game with nearly meaningless objective based gameplay?

Why do you think those games are dead, and this one is still going after 10 years? Maybe a large persistent war going on a single server ISN'T the way to go.


The issue is that "most" of the players today are NOT into war, they are just capturing bases until the map resets. Call it winning the war, call it reset. To them it's the same. WWII Online war can't be won in a week. Remember the complaints about maps lasting more than a week in here?  Todays players aren't looking for a fight, nor rivalries, nor challenges. Their goal is to reset the map....and get a few perks.

If they were looking for fights they wouldn't be in the local horde trying to capture a base, they would be trying to defend bases with caps and fighter sweeps.

If they were looking for rivalries, they would be looking for those squads that are on at the same time they are and go head to head and try to capture bases from them and the other would try to do the same. Instead they spend all of their time avoiding other groups, and run to the other side of the map when they run into resistance.

If they were looking for challenges they would hit the city, then the factories and then take out whole fronts of bases and their supplies....or try to 

But all that stuff is too much work! Run missions to drop ords at a few bases at the same time? Try to capture 3 bases at once? Do co-ordinated attack using GVs, buffs, and fights? Why bother, 20 heavy 110s and 5 goons will get you rolling right along with out much trouble.

[Hoff]

I would argue that World War 2 Online has as many players online as Aces High does and it's been around for quite a while. I would also argue that World War 2 Online had way more players at some point. Planetside failed because SOE is retarded (hello SWG).


People don't take out strategic targets because it takes only a few hours of just zerging bases to win the map with the current "war." Why can't the game require one country to take a capitol before they win? Those clusters of factories/cities/capitol look awesome and I'd love to fight in/around it, but it NEVER happens. There is no war currently, it feels like a battlefield map where you take maybe two or three bases and you win (I know it's more than two or three, but not by much). This is silly especially with how easy it is to fly under radar with 20 or less people and immediately take down every spawn building before defenders can even spawn onto the runway to attempt a defense. Attack orders like in World War 2 Online would allow defenders to actually defend. I'm not going to repeat my reasoning behind it, but if you care, you can look back when I talked about it a couple pages ago. I don't know what the sequential base order thing was, but attack orders sounds different from what that was.

[RTHolmes]

I think you've nailed the problem, just not the solution

[gldnbb]

Quote from: Hoff

This is silly especially with how easy it is to fly under radar with 20 or less people and immediately take down every spawn building before defenders can even spawn onto the runway to attempt a defense.

Bases flash upon entering dar ring, giving guys a chance to take off.   Quite a few times when attempting an noe raid, the enemy defenders take off in at least 1,2, or 3's    and  immediately hunt the c47 or try to kill a few bombers to run a drop or fight off a few fighters.    Have then seen more hordes of enemy defenders take off from a base to run immediately to the town and shoot down/defend.   Have seen a few missions fail because they get a cap.  Have seen us do the same thing against an incoming raid and ruin their base capture.

But, what is also being overlooked here is that the enemy is also attacking multiple other bases at the same time, and keep the enemies tied up in a furbal or attack,  while they capture around the long way.



But I agree about the strat targets.  Would be more fun to use,  and so would missions to kill trains be but those are overlooked as part of strat because they hold very little value  vs.  other valued objects in the game.

[moot]

Just one thing... IMO WWIIOL might not be empty if its flight model wasn't so bad.  Or the other way around, since I never played WWIIOL (maybe someone who played it long term can chime in, e.g. Vulcan IIRC), if AH had as elaborate or at least as rich a ground/fps war, without diminishing the air war, it ought to have more players than it'd know what to do with.

[Ardy123]

Just one thing... IMO WWIIOL might not be empty if its flight model wasn't so bad.  Or the other way around, since I never played WWIIOL (maybe someone who played it long term can chime in, e.g. Vulcan IIRC), if AH had as elaborate or at least as rich a ground/fps war, without diminishing the air war, it ought to have more players than it'd know what to do with.

There isn't a well defined front, nor many maps with strategic choke points etc... More than that, 'progress' is only outlined in the number of 'bases' taken. Maybe something with more...

1) ways to cripple the other team
2) Well defined border with maps that encouraged some strategic objective, (like taking a bridge, or crossing a pass)
3) More structure to support the 'war', ie you can't just spawn willy-nilly, you have to secure a supply line, have the strats to do it, etc...

[grizz441]

The Few are so competitive that even agreeing with their rival on the BBS is an act of defeat.

Spek I promise, next time you say something intelligent I will give you a big +1.