Arena changes and ENY

[Noir]

what about we keep the arena switch, but make "off hours" a small map only arena, and have a single arena with huge maps only for prime time?

[Lusche]

what about we keep the arena switch, but make "off hours" a small map only arena, and have a single arena with huge maps only for prime time?

Would be perfect in my book 

[VonMessa]

Seconded 

[SmokinLoon]

Or the way it use to was..... one large LW arena. 

I vote THIS, but only use the LARGE maps.  Maps like Mindanao and that tiny map with the large mountain in the middle would not be good with 400+ players.

[Airwolf]

No ENY?  Sure, I would love nothing better than the side with the highest number of players to be able to field a spixteen, tempest, and whatever other perk ride they choose, simultaneously.

I keep hearing about this and it does not hold up...In FA you didn't have ENY, nor perk points, yet you didn't have people all flying just one or two planes...I saw many a new person grab a Spit 16, A LA7 or a Tempest get shot down by people with "inferior" planes....And for the good players?...Well, they earn the perk points and grab a Me 262, or a Tempest and then they can pound the snot out of someone who can't take a Tempest because they don't have the "points"...

And before any of the top notch flyers bellow, "learn to fly and get the perks!", not everyone is a "Top Gun" in AH... Not everyone, can fly 24/7 to up their perks....There are some people that join AH just to spend a few hours per week having some fun, but not enough time to earn these points....

AH is supposed to be reaching out to ALL people...But the attitude among some people here appears to be "if you don't play often, and are not a Top Gun, we don't want you"....

And yet, some of those very people are wondering, "How to stem the tide of dropping subscriptions?"...

[VonMessa]

I keep hearing about this and it does not hold up...In FA you didn't have ENY, nor perk points, yet you didn't have people all flying just one or two planes...I saw many a new person grab a Spit 16, A LA7 or a Tempest get shot down by people with "inferior" planes....And for the good players?...Well, they earn the perk points and grab a Me 262, or a Tempest and then they can pound the snot out of someone who can't take a Tempest because they don't have the "points"...

And before any of the top notch flyers bellow, "learn to fly and get the perks!", not everyone is a "Top Gun" in AH... Not everyone, can fly 24/7 to up their perks....There are some people that join AH just to spend a few hours per week having some fun, but not enough time to earn these points....

AH is supposed to be reaching out to ALL people...But the attitude among some people here appears to be "if you don't play often, and are not a Top Gun, we don't want you"....

And yet, some of those very people are wondering, "How to stem the tide of dropping subscriptions?"...

Well personally, ENY means squat to me.  Our squad flies German planes only (with the exception of the Macchi's whichcan be considered of German design) so there are only a few planes below 15 ENY.  In almost 7 years, I have yet to be unable to field a plane in the German plane set.

If you think that the lack of ENY restrictions or perked planes would not be reflected in the percentage of uber planes that were fielded, look to the DA and see what most of the mouth-breathers in there fly, on average.

As for attitude?  I would pay double the subscription rate if I could be assured that the "I don't want to learn, I want it now" console types could be discouraged from playing.

If you are going to use another game as an example, try not to step on your own Johnson in the process.  We all know how the train wreck that used to be called FA ended.

Carry on.
 

[Lusche]

I keep hearing about this and it does not hold up...In FA you didn't have ENY, nor perk points, yet you didn't have people all flying just one or two planes...I saw many a new person grab a Spit 16, A LA7 or a Tempest get shot down by people with "inferior" planes....And for the good players?...Well, they earn the perk points and grab a Me 262, or a Tempest and then they can pound the snot out of someone who can't take a Tempest because they don't have the "points"...

And before any of the top notch flyers bellow, "learn to fly and get the perks!", not everyone is a "Top Gun" in AH... Not everyone, can fly 24/7 to up their perks....There are some people that join AH just to spend a few hours per week having some fun, but not enough time to earn these points....

Yes, it would be nice if everybody could totally fly what he likes all the time. Unfortunately the history has shown that this doesn't work (perks and eny limits have not been here from the start). There has to be a kind of limit on some rides which otherwise could unbalance the MA. I know the term is very vague and we can argue a lot about wich planes should or should not be included. But just imagine what happens if the 262 or the Tempest would be unperked, with the only thing being able to fight them being another Me 262 or Tempest. And you don't need even to go far back in time when the not perked F4U-C was utterly dominating the MA in any way - See the EW setup, where the unperked and unjustly high ENY Hurricane IIC dominated the arena and had (probably still has) a very detrimental impact on gameplay.

It is true that the concept of perk points favors vets and dedicated players, but on the other hand it's also providing a kind of goal or incentive for players to become better or play more.  And so far, no one else has come up with a practicable alternative to limit the usage of those potential "dominators".

[Wiley]

AH is supposed to be reaching out to ALL people

It is?  It looks to me more like an online competitive PVP game.  Those rarely seem to have an 'everybody's a winner, everybody gets a gold star' mentality.  Someone somewhere once said the idea behind the game is to piss the other side off.

...But the attitude among some people here appears to be "if you don't play often, and are not a Top Gun, we don't want you"....

Unless you are completely unable to get guns-onto anything at all, you eventually get perks.  Flying in attack mode and strafing defenseless buildings, you can build perks.  HOing everything in sight, you should win the occasional one and get perks.

It adds some pressure and excitement as well, as you don't want to lose your hard-earned perks, so you perhaps fly a bit smarter when you get into the perk ride.  Perk planes are the one single thing that isn't 100% disposable in the game, where dying actually has an impact on you.

what about we keep the arena switch, but make "off hours" a small map only arena, and have a single arena with huge maps only for prime time?

Would it even be worth it to switch to a small arena in off hours?  Would a sparsely populated large map be that much worse than a moderately populated small map to offset the logoffs and grumbling when the arena switches?

I've come to the realization lately that the changeover times are only a small window every day, but there are people whose couple hours a day to play come with that changeover right in the middle of their playtime, which results in frustration.

There's no perfect solution, but if it's going to be always one map, is it worth switching from big to small?

Wiley.

[Lusche]

Would it even be worth it to switch to a small arena in off hours?  Would a sparsely populated large map be that much worse than a moderately populated small map to offset the logoffs and grumbling when the arena switches?

Yes, absolutely. The disparity between peak and offpeak numbers is too large.
I mean, one reason that players complain about split setup and do want to go back to single LW MA is that "there are not enough players for a second arena." Well, there are also not enough players for a large arena during offpeak times. It's now 10 hours into the offpak map, and we have about 120 players online. On good days it's about 160 at the same time. For several hours the population is less than 100 during offpeak.

[Wiley]

I guess when I look at the map during off hours, big or small what I see is a couple hot spots on the fronts, and some singletons flying around looking for undefended towns to bomb, and a few guys hunting the buffs looking for undefended towns.  Your gameplay options more or less are to either do something at the hot spot, bomb towns, or intercept those who are bombing towns.

How does the small arena improve that situation?  The grids are still the same size for hunting the buffs in, right?

I'm not devil's advocating, I'm just not seeing where there's a measurable difference in gameplay between large and small arena in that situation.

Wiley.

[Lusche]

I guess when I look at the map during off hours, big or small what I see is a couple hot spots on the fronts, and some singletons flying around looking for undefended towns to bomb, and a few guys hunting the buffs looking for undefended towns.  Your gameplay options more or less are to either do something at the hot spot, bomb towns, or intercept those who are bombing towns.

How does the small arena improve that situation?  The grids are still the same size for hunting the buffs in, right?

I'm not devil's advocating, I'm just not seeing where there's a measurable difference in gameplay between large and small arena in that situation.

Wiley.

On a large map and only 60-100 players, those hotspots are quite rare, and even more rare are prolonged battles. Because it's too easy just going elsewhere when an attack fails. Also take into account the "too many chiefs, too few Indians" syndrome, when about every player decides to attack a different target, further spreading out the action.
 I stopped playing AH last year when we still had large maps (and two arenas), because I was tired upping for single cons that far to often didn't even stay but just went elsewhere when they saw someone taking off. With a smaller map and higher player density, the individual battles tend to get bigger, and there is far less time wasted looking for action.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not asking for packing everyone into one single place. The best situation is having a medium number (I could try to define that if required) of people on a large map, so that the biggest number of options for gameplay is available for every player, from low key actions and occasional sneaks at remote places to high intensity, multi-squad battles at hotspots. In fact, I was the biggest proponent to get large maps back into the game in the year after the arenasplit. But we had a lot more players online at any given time back then.

There can be both to little room on a map (crowded) as well as too little (deserted).

[Airwolf]

Well personally, ENY means squat to me.  Our squad flies German planes only (with the exception of the Macchi's whichcan be considered of German design) so there are only a few planes below 15 ENY.  In almost 7 years, I have yet to be unable to field a plane in the German plane set.

If you think that the lack of ENY restrictions or perked planes would not be reflected in the percentage of uber planes that were fielded, look to the DA and see what most of the mouth-breathers in there fly, on average.

As for attitude?  I would pay double the subscription rate if I could be assured that the "I don't want to learn, I want it now" console types could be discouraged from playing.

If you are going to use another game as an example, try not to step on your own Johnson in the process.  We all know how the train wreck that used to be called FA ended.

Carry on.
 

Well, FA didn't go under because of the lack of ENY or perk points...It was the failure to adapt..For example, the maps in Territorial Combat never changed....I left for quite awhile because it was boring...When I returned, no change..The same old pie map despite numerous complaints...And FA was certainly no "train wreck"...Just a lack of listening to subscribers and the, "everything is A OK".... 

[Gryffin]

The big maps are boring as hell when there are only 100 players online. Locking the arena to switch maps also kills whatever action was going on, since a lot of players don't bother coming back after the map switch.

Why not have the number of available "unlocked" fields in a map change based on how many players are online? Force players into a smaller area as numbers drop so that the density of players is always the same no matter how many people are online.

This way a big map will behave like a small map when numbers drop without having to lock the arena to switch maps.

[Shuffler]

I keep hearing about this and it does not hold up...In FA you didn't have ENY, nor perk points, yet you didn't have people all flying just one or two planes...I saw many a new person grab a Spit 16, A LA7 or a Tempest get shot down by people with "inferior" planes....And for the good players?...Well, they earn the perk points and grab a Me 262, or a Tempest and then they can pound the snot out of someone who can't take a Tempest because they don't have the "points"...

And before any of the top notch flyers bellow, "learn to fly and get the perks!", not everyone is a "Top Gun" in AH... Not everyone, can fly 24/7 to up their perks....There are some people that join AH just to spend a few hours per week having some fun, but not enough time to earn these points....

AH is supposed to be reaching out to ALL people...But the attitude among some people here appears to be "if you don't play often, and are not a Top Gun, we don't want you"....

And yet, some of those very people are wondering, "How to stem the tide of dropping subscriptions?"...

You see a ton of perk planes. It's the only place many of them will probably ever get to see inside a perk plane.