FIVE Easy Things to Improve the Game NOW

[Arlo]

I expect nothing to be done.

I do, however, expect Arlo to pop in any moment and declare ALL IS WELL.

No, CL, the sky is falling. Did you act this way on the WB forum? Bet they miss you.  

[Arlo]

The current thread is a perfect illustration of why the game is what it is today and why it stands on the brink of extinction.

Please, Rapier. I have more respect for you than I do the johnny-come-lately whine-baller one-upping attention-potatos who seem to want this game to share the fate of their previous fly-digs. Lead the charge, not the retreat.  

Cut the dramatic dialog. Just post what you wish for without the poo-slinging, boss.

Like so:

For consideration,

1.   Please get rid of the BIG maps. Particularly after 1 am EST. AH doesn’t draw the numbers anymore. It won’t get back to those numbers unless players can find each other and interact. When the game was small, you had smaller maps. Hold off on new features until you have a complete set of appropriate size maps. This may require you to build them yourselves.
2.   Please get rid of ENY, particularly when the arena has less than 100 people in it: ENY as a balancing mechanism is dubious. It drives away more people than it retains. See (a) above. *
3.   Please get rid of the “feature” that a single bomber or small group of bombers can knock out the radar for a country. What is the best outcome of this feature? You make one bomber pilot happy, perhaps some proportion of his countrymen happy and you make 1/3 of the people on line (one country) leave or want to leave. (The short easy version: harden HQ)

Thank you for your consideration,

A concerned player

 

[bustr]

This is not the Arlo you think you remember Arlo was Arlo................

[tunnelrat]

My $4.17 (adjusted for inflation):


1.  Jets don't bother me but they are among a laundry list of reasons several of my friends (who played Aces way longer than I ever did) yawn at me and say "meh" when I try to get them to re-sub.  It doesn't help that the people that fly them tend to be the ones crying about never being able to find a fight and decrying "runstangs" etc, while they are doing the exact same thing.

2.  You should never punish players because there are too many on.  The ENY-limit thing is just bad business.  The FIRST thing I heard last night when I logged in was someone say "Welp, can't fly my plane because of ENY, you all have a good evening."  It's like time stands still.  Instead of punishing the side with the numbers, reward the side with less... if one side has enough people that they would normally only be able to fly ENY 10 and up, instead of blocking them from enjoying the game, just set the other sides perk costs to 0 for non-jets.  Free C-Hogs, Dash-4s, Tempests, even B-29s... not LESS perks to fly them, but 0 perks.  That'd clear the problem right up.

[-ammo-]

My $4.17 (adjusted for inflation):


2.  You should never punish players because there are too many on.  The ENY-limit thing is just bad business.  The FIRST thing I heard last night when I logged in was someone say "Welp, can't fly my plane because of ENY, you all have a good evening."  It's like time stands still.  Instead of punishing the side with the numbers, reward the side with less... if one side has enough people that they would normally only be able to fly ENY 10 and up, instead of blocking them from enjoying the game, just set the other sides perk costs to 0 for non-jets.  Free C-Hogs, Dash-4s, Tempests, even B-29s... not LESS perks to fly them, but 0 perks.  That'd clear the problem right up.

This is interesting to me

[bozon]

2.  You should never punish players because there are too many on.  The ENY-limit thing is just bad business.  The FIRST thing I heard last night when I logged in was someone say "Welp, can't fly my plane because of ENY, you all have a good evening."  It's like time stands still.  Instead of punishing the side with the numbers, reward the side with less... if one side has enough people that they would normally only be able to fly ENY 10 and up, instead of blocking them from enjoying the game, just set the other sides perk costs to 0 for non-jets.  Free C-Hogs, Dash-4s, Tempests, even B-29s... not LESS perks to fly them, but 0 perks.  That'd clear the problem right up.

I dont know how long you played AH, but in the past, side balancing threads and complaints were very common. Have you seen any such threads lately? in the past year? While the 12H rules does not allow side hopping to avoid ENY locks, it did make players choose a side that does not get ENYed on regular basis during their playing hours and thus achieved side balancing on a large scale. Fluctuations still happen, especially when numbers are low so ENY kicks in occasionally, but never for long periods. It is the 12H rule that need to be addressed in order to allow a few players to hop sides when temporary population fluctuation makes ENY kicks in - it only takes a small number of them to hop in order to remove the ENY lock.

Perk-less C hog will not make players change sides. I and many others have in excess of 10,000 perks and are completely blind to perk costs. The side with the low numbers will continue to get ganged even if they all choose do get ganged in C-hogs - but they wont. They will get ganged in their usual P-51Ds, Spit16s and La7s, for the same reason that players on the ENY locked side will only play in their P-51D and totally refuse to take a P-51B.

If HTC is so afraid of lowering the 12H limit globally, how about this:
Lower make the side switching limit 1-2H only for players that switched from a more populated country to the LEAST populated one.
Or if this is a little to permissive, make it so only when the sides are enough out of balance so ENY limits are in effect. Leave it 12H if you move to a more populated country than you current one. This will prevent from players to move to the more populated country in order to "win the war", but will still allow a small number of players to hop sides for an hour or two of action.
Add this temporary 1H side switch limit info to the ENY limit message!
Remember that players that hop side remove the ENY locks for everyone

[-ammo-]

I dont know how long you played AH, but in the past, side balancing threads and complaints were very common. Have you seen any such threads lately? in the past year? While the 12H rules does not allow side hopping to avoid ENY locks, it did make players choose a side that does not get ENYed on regular basis during their playing hours and thus achieved side balancing on a large scale. Fluctuations still happen, especially when numbers are low so ENY kicks in occasionally, but never for long periods. It is the 12H rule that need to be addressed in order to allow a few players to hop sides when temporary population fluctuation makes ENY kicks in - it only takes a small number of them to hop in order to remove the ENY lock.

Perk-less C hog will not make players change sides. I and many others have in excess of 10,000 perks and are completely blind to perk costs. The side with the low numbers will continue to get ganged even if they all choose do get ganged in C-hogs - but they wont. They will get ganged in their usual P-51Ds, Spit16s and La7s, for the same reason that players on the ENY locked side will only play in their P-51D and totally refuse to take a P-51B.

If HTC is so afraid of lowering the 12H limit globally, how about this:
Lower make the side switching limit 1-2H only for players that switched from a more populated country to the LEAST populated one.
Or if this is a little to permissive, make it so only when the sides are enough out of balance so ENY limits are in effect. Leave it 12H if you move to a more populated country than you current one. This will prevent from players to move to the more populated country in order to "win the war", but will still allow a small number of players to hop sides for an hour or two of action.
Add this temporary 1H side switch limit info to the ENY limit message!
Remember that players that hop side remove the ENY locks for everyone

Actually I think free perk planes to a severely undermanned country would promote side switching as long as HTC would relax the time limit. 

Certainly it could be gamed and the understrength country would not stay understrength for long.

That's my opinion only and worth about the cost of a cup of coffee at Waffle House.

[bustr]

The abuse of the game that caused the introduction of ENY had 300+ rook players swamping the entire map in late war rides. ENY as it stands is a legacy of a high population time keeping guard against a sudden super hoard.

Today it guards against 12 guys upping Tempest to slaughter 2 guys off peak time. When the country numbers are 12\2\3. But, the inanity of it is, those 2 guys can up 262 and slaughter the 12 guys reduced to early war rides who will probably log off.

Unperking those rides, CHog, 4Hog and Tempest, you would have a whole other reason players log off to whine about. Once they were free, they would become mostly the only rides in the MA, in the hands of players no longer afraid to commit to combat with them because of perks. As is, they are a nuisance, many of the vets who can make them a terror in the MA, don't fly them as full time rides. Even with perk banks 10,000 and above. There are already too many who hide at alt with speed in the P-51D and don't fight anymore. Giving them these rides will just make them bigger sissies with a stale limited style of predictable combat. And ENY reduces the cost of them all to try and induce side switching. Instead, players just log off like they did in AH1 when the rooks decided to help HiTech invent ENY.

And then you will all be here whining at HiTech once again because the game is dying with all the high speed fight avoiders.

[tunnelrat]

The fact that hosers won't fly the P-51B instead of the P-51D always boggled my mind...  I mean, getting spray-and-prayed at all night last night by P-51Ds and only dying to two of them might be why, considering the only downside to the Bravo is the loss of two MGs hahaha...

I know that a lot of people out there are perk-blind, but there are still a good number of newer players and just downright horribad pilots that are loath to use the perks they have accumulated... having moved from "horribad" to "simply terrible" myself, I can relate... there is a WORLD of difference between a cost of 1 perk and 0 perks for those players... just the lack of anxiety alone is huge.

Do I think it's going to single-handedly fix the issue?  No way.  Too complex.  But I do think it might help, though your thoughts on the subject are very much sage as well.

The real trick to getting people to fly again?  A grass-roots movement where we all reach out to players that have stopped playing and tell them we miss them, we're having a blast, and we'd love to see them back.  I don't see anything getting a flood of new blood into the game these days, but there are hundreds of players that could easily be tempted into coming back.

I will say one thing though... last night, a new player asked how to change their name on 200... and their only responses were "Alt-F4" and "You can't, it's stuck that way permanently."  I gave it a bit to see if ANYONE else would help this person before I went ahead and told them what to do... this community really needs to step up its game and go out of its way to shepherd new players, even if it's tedious.

[bustr]

Consider all the old players who will come back to peek at AH3 when it's released. This game has a proven infection that the most reticent denier of lingering attraction can over come. AH3 may be a perfect storm on arrival to inspire old vets to indulge, and new players to see past the graphics that used to turn them off looking in the storefront window.

As for community outreach, I have a better chance of winning the lottery.

Skuzzy is quietly creating help videos of excellent content, while HiTech is throwing alpha tests at his Guinea pigs.

[Gman]

Consider all the old players who will come back to peek at AH3 when it's released. This game has a proven infection that the most reticent denier of lingering attraction can over come. AH3 may be a perfect storm on arrival to inspire old vets to indulge, and new players to see past the graphics that used to turn them off looking in the storefront window.

Agreed.  I've been saying since the new version was announced, that the above is true.  I also agree that HTC has an excellent opportunity with the timing of the new version to make positive changes to the game, even if they are subtle.  Virtually everyone, even the most dissatisfied complainers from my observation, agree that the numbers will spike when the new version arrives, even just a playable beta of it.  However, those numbers need to have staying power, and need to increase in the form of completely new players, not just those bees that have flown off to other hives returning for fresh honey.  In order for this to happen, just from my observations of all the complaints regarding the game in the last year or so, changes NEED to happen.  I'm not advocating one thing or the other, I'm just of the opinion that enough of a % of the players are dissatisfied with the mechanics, which obviously means something needs to be done.  

A lot of the current issues many players have will sort themselves out when there is 500+ players in the maps we have, IMO anyway.  The trouble is we don't get those numbers, we get half of that as an average on most nights.  Hopefully the new version will at least temporarily fix that, and again, as stated, if those numbers can be made to have staying power, I think there will be a marked decline in complaints and dissatisfied customers.

Some have recently been sarcastically repeating that "the sky is falling".  Well, it hasn't "fallen", but its altitude has fallen from 50k to 25k feet.  That's the sort of decrease you want to keep a close eye on, one would think.  I think a lot of players will be much happier with their AH experience when the numbers/sky climbs back up to previous cruising altitude, instead of bumping along in the turbulent mid level airspace. 

[JimmyD3]

Just out of curiosity, what percentage of the players in the MA get on the forum here? I would suspect that the complainers do not represent the majority of the players. That having been said, any product needs to change (evolve) as the needs of the consumer change, I believe HTC is doing that.

Getting tired of all the whining, armchair quarterbacking, and "business experts" spouting their unsolicited 2 cents. No disrespect intended to the OP or anyone else.

[Lusche]

Just out of curiosity, what percentage of the players in the MA get on the forum here?

No real idea (yet? ) but my gut feeling is that it's less than 100 really actively partaking in gameplay discussions like these on a regular base.

[mthrockmor]

The current thread is a perfect illustration of why the game is what it is today and why it stands on the brink of extinction.

Rapier, no and yes.

It is a 'chicken versus the egg' statement. You are saying that the numbers are low because of negative chat. I would say it is the exact opposite. When the numbers were high, I said nothing. There wasn't anything to talk about, other than I want an F8F and a P-61B. As the numbers dropped sticks began to ask why. As the numbers got lower, the questions turned bitter. Finally, here we are.

I fully expect that negative chatter does have an impact on the game, without a doubt. Though it is NOT the cause of our numbers cut more than half.

boo

[Karnak]

2.  You should never punish players because there are too many on.  The ENY-limit thing is just bad business.  The FIRST thing I heard last night when I logged in was someone say "Welp, can't fly my plane because of ENY, you all have a good evening."  It's like time stands still.  Instead of punishing the side with the numbers, reward the side with less... if one side has enough people that they would normally only be able to fly ENY 10 and up, instead of blocking them from enjoying the game, just set the other sides perk costs to 0 for non-jets.  Free C-Hogs, Dash-4s, Tempests, even B-29s... not LESS perks to fly them, but 0 perks.  That'd clear the problem right up.

It is possible that would be better for the game, but for some players such as myself it would also be the deathknell.

I don't want to fly F4U-1Cs and Tempests, nor even La-7s and P-51Ds.  If my side is grossly outnumbered I would still be in a Mossie, Ki-84 or Spit VIII, nor do I want to face exclusively superplanes should my side be the one with numbers.  Those being the choices I would opt the third choice and simply not fly.