Its getting lonely in here! Aussie time is dead in MA.

[Brooke]

These days, most of my play is around 11 pm US Pacific time (4 pm Melbourne time), and it does sometimes get hard to find fights.  It gets harder as it gets later beyond that, too.  So, I can very much sympathize with the Aussies, Kiwis, and Japanese.

Also, it is annoying to go on at that time, see no sizeable fights, yet see a sprinkling of goofballs flying around by themselves, spread thin over nearly the whole map.  Who are those people, and what the heck are they doing?

So, I, too, think it would help to have the fight more focused, but how is that best accomplished?

HTC can't run small maps always, or during the times where there are 500 people flying, it might get too cramped, or one country overrunning another completely might happen more frequently than is fun for most people.

There used to be a capture order that focused fights into smaller areas.  I really liked that, but clearly it wasn't highly popular, as that went away after it was tried out for a while.

As a person who runs special events, what I typically do to focus the fight is have planes and vehicles available only in some smaller region and not the whole map.  So, I'd probably try that -- start disabling more of the map as numbers of people in flight decline.  But then you have to be careful of what to do with task groups.  If someone sails one off into a region where the opponent can't up anything, you have a problem.  So, it would probably also require disabling launching anything from a task group that strayed outside the active-fighting area.

It's not a small thing to figure out all of the ramifications of any such implementation or to code it up upon concluding that it has a good chance of working, though.

[SirNuke]

the capture order should kick in at night

[Lusche]

Nevcer, never, never again capture order. 

[The Fugitive]

SNIP

HTC can't run small maps always, or during the times where there are 500 people flying, it might get too cramped, or one country overrunning another completely might happen more frequently than is fun for most people.

LOL!!! not a problem any more. There haven't been even 300 people flying, even on weekends US prime time, in a long time.

[Lusche]

HTC can't run small maps always, or during the times where there are 500 people flying, it might get too cramped, or one country overrunning another completely might happen more frequently than is fun for most people.

Just for the record, we had about twice as many people in the sky in the same single arena when I signed up in 2005. And the war victory requirement was totally diffferent and virtually forced one country being rolled by the other two...

[BaldEagl]

I've long advocated a tiered system whereby you pay for access.

For instance say for $5/mo. you get the TA, H2H and WWI, for $10/mo you add the DA, EW and TDIWWII (to get the taste of scenarios and MW/LW aircraft) and for $15/mo. you get full access.  This is just for illustration of the concept.

IMO it would allow people to get a better feel for the game and build skill at a lower cost while filling some of the empty arenas and giving everyone else more to do.

The 2 week free trial doesn't have to change although it might help to go to a month.

I don't think current players would opt down although in hard economic times some may rather than just cancelling altogether which would be a benefit to HT.

BTW Fugi, I almost always see 300 online but never much more than that.  There were over 300 last night when I logged on.

[BluBerry]

LOL!!! not a problem any more. There haven't been even 300 people flying, even on weekends US prime time, in a long time.

I've seen 320-360.

[The Fugitive]

I've seen 320-360.

Im sorry I don't fly as much as I use to, but wo-who! 360!  That is still a far cry from 500.

....and an even farther cry from the 1000 Hitech said we had on prime time US weekend when he had split the main arenas. 

[Brooke]

Nevcer, never, never again capture order. 

Heh!  I liked it.   There were many enormous fights for the next base in those days.

[Brooke]

Whatever that top number is (300 or 500), it is still a difficulty to have the same map territory be suitable for 300 people and for 50 people.

For 50 people up, if you don't have a much smaller area, you don't get enough concentration of people to have decent fights.  (I would have thought that people would cause it to concentrate on their own, drawn to the action -- but that's not the case.)  But that smaller area would be too small for 300 people.

[Lusche]

But that smaller area would be too small for 300 people.

I disagree

A map like Mindanao is not to small for the relatively short time we are more then 300 players on it. We used to play with much more than that on it for a long time. And we still do, as 10 out of 13 terrains are of that size. The current problem is that large maps are much more persistent, and we often end up for a whole week on a large terrain, which can make gameplay on any other than peak time very dreadful.

And this is coming from someone who lobbied hard for the return of the large terrains, which were gone for a year after the arena split. And Compello is still my favourite map of all.

[titanic3]

One big problem like someone mentioned are the people running around at the corner of the maps on milk runs trying to get their score up. There might be 100 people on but if nearly half of them are doing milk runs or sitting in GVs at a spawn, of course nothing is going to happen. I log on, check around the map and see if there's any decent fight happening. If not, I log off. And I'm sure I'm not the only one who does something like this.

There is a need for a system to encourage people to fight and defend. Milk runners do what they do because the score they get is a lot easier and faster. Maybe have a system that randomly select a base near the front lines, highlight it, and give that base perk bonuses. Defenders that up from that base gets an increased perk multiplier and the attackers that damage the base get a perk bonus.

[Brooke]

I disagree

A map like Mindanao is not to small for the relatively short time we are more then 300 players on it.

To me, when there are 60 people on, things would be better restricted to about 6 sectors worth of area and a few active bases on each side, but that would be very restrictive for 300 players.

Overall, I think I would have more fun if the area were reduced, however that is done -- smaller maps, some sort of adaptive availability of bases, or . . . the capture-order method.

Lusche, why didn't you like the capture-order method?

[Lusche]

Lusche, why didn't you like the capture-order method?

It was very limited and dysfunctional.

- It crammed all arena activity into very tight spots. If you think small map like Ndisles is too small for 300+players, I wonder how one could ask for even more player density in an area when about all players are being packed in 2-6 places.
- Thus gameplay was very limited. Neither were other areas of the map in play (no matter if they had been offering even better combat options) nor was there any opportunity for surprise raids, CV attacks and so on (a whole lot of the arena combat is capture driven). There was simply no point in mounting CV attacks on bases that could not be captured at all, aside form a very few dedicated duellists
- Often the attack path run into dead ends by terrain and base placements., for example having to attack an airbase with only GV bases anywhere close to it
- The whole rest of the arena was really becoming the milkrunners dream. Nobody cared about that dot working a remote town for attack damage points, because everybody knew the town could not be captured at all. 

[TonyJoey]

I disagree

A map like Mindanao is not to small for the relatively short time we are more then 300 players on it. We used to play with much more than that on it for a long time. And we still do, as 10 out of 13 terrains are of that size. The current problem is that large maps are much more persistent, and we often end up for a whole week on a large terrain, which can make gameplay on any other than peak time very dreadful.

And this is coming from someone who lobbied hard for the return of the large terrains, which were gone for a year after the arena split. And Compello is still my favourite map of all.

Compello is still up in MA. Earlier this month it went the entire week without reset, then it came back and a day later had been reset with different sides. It's pretty ridiculous to see the same giant map for 1/3-1/2 of an entire month.