Dynamic ENY

[pembquist]

Here is one out of the box: if your a 2 weeker you get air starts at 15 k within the nme dar ring. I'd say what the game needs is a no perk ai arena for skill building.

[Letalis]

Why not have ENY values vary dynamically to reflect the relative effectiveness of each plane?  Every shootdown generates useful data on both plane and pilot.  Simply logistic analysis can then separate these to give relative plane effectiveness based on actual performance.

You could also adjust pilot scores according to relative ranks as well, as they do in chess.  When an ace downs a newbie - it's just about what we'd expect, so nobody's rank should change too much.  When a newbie downs an ace, that's quite unexpected, so the win and loss is much larger for both sides.

I'm all for accurate relative ENY, but a kill is a kill and should result in equal outcome whether an ace kills a noob or vice versa - to do any differently actually undermines the equality inherent to being a player in the game.  Further, as useful as some data may be, some aces maintain a 1:1 k/d by flying into 1vmany situations while others of similar skill level avoid those situations and end up with a 40:1 k/d. The  assumption that all players play for either rank or perks is flawed, much of the data is rendered irrelevant by gameplay style.  Have a fixed system and let people play accordingly without handouts.  There's a multitude of other ways to attract people to the game without alienating the existing player base on behalf of the summer squeekers. 

[Letalis]

Here is one out of the box: if your a 2 weeker you get air starts at 15 k within the nme dar ring. I'd say what the game needs is a no perk ai arena for skill building.

Why stop there?  Why not spawn two-weekers instantly 10k above the nearest enemy field?  We could also mount lasers on their Spits for the first two weeks to eliminate the need to learn deflection shooting. Now THAT will help their self-esteem and build a vast player base of entitled whiners and shaders at the same time!

woot.

[Stellaris]

@Letalis  Yep.  As stated, handicapping pilots as in chess or golf is just an option made easily available by the requirements of a dynamic ENY system.  It's really the ENY system that I'm talking about here.

@pembquist  Please see the previous comment @bustr ref misunderstanding the point and then getting sarcastic about it.

[pembquist]

@letalis leaving your sarcasm aside I have had 2 friends try ah and bail because pretty much it was take off fly for 5-10 minutes turn die. It is a lot to ask for somebody to stick through and then pay for. It's just an idea, I guess if HT was incompetent and couldn't tell who kept signing up as new two weekers, and if the motivation to be able to airspawn was greater than the motivation to not spend 15 dollars a month that already exists I would be alarmed too. I really shouldn't have said anything but since the topic seemed to be about changes that would motivate new and less skilled players to play and pay. I thought I'd mention an idea that was directly aimed at making the experience for new players more palatable so that they might stick around and become paying customers. It does not change the skill required like lazer beams would, it just changes the balance between tedium and excitement and by increasing the engagement/playing time ratio makes a first kill more likely, and that kill I would argue is why people pay.

@stellaris I wasn't being sarcastic. I am assuming that your ideas are in the vein of making the game more enjoyable and rewarding for the less skilled without taking anything away from the skilled. Some people get upset with this kind of thinking because they don't believe it is possible and if it were it would immoral. All I care about is what works to keep'em coming in without degrading the game into World of Whatever.

[Stellaris]

@pembquist  - Whups, I'm sorry!  The earlier sarcasm set me up to see that.

@letalis - A kill is a kill.  However the perk reward for getting a kill is arbitrary.  Currently it's based on an arbitrary assessment of the plane's relative combat effectiveness (the ENY value) and an arbitrary adjustment based on the number of players online.

So my first suggestion is to remove some of the arbitraryness of the ENY value by using the exchange rate.  Since there are two main variables, plane and pilot, and since most pilots fly multiple plane types, we can use logistic regression to isolate the plane combat effectiveness from that of the pilot.

My second suggestion, since the logistic regression automatically gives you relative pilot skill as well (independent of who is flying hot planes all the time) is to handicap players perk points (not their ranking!) based on their relative skill.  This doesn't have to flat-curve everyone's results, but will serve to encourage new players to keep trying, because at least they can try out the perk planes sooner.