Off hours-- or should that be low population WARNING>>RANT

[Vudu15]

Last night I log in around 2 am CDT 65 folks in the server, go looking for a fight. I find a base flashing, I up to find a 190 porking ords. I Up in my 43 but give up on the chase and land, see a con at a base south of me up an LA5 its a D9 porking ords. Guy hits dar and one ord bunker and with no visible dmg heads for home 7 and a half mins I follow this guy with some alt and unable to gain tried to set up to tag him before he made his ack both of us still doing top speed and both under 1K he makes his turn in the ack outward towards me I try for a shot but as I squeeze the trigger I lose a half wing regain control of the plane and start heading home.....but guess what now this wants to chase me end up auguring after a Yak3 drops on me out of nowhere. Learn through 200 that it was a wirb on the field his buddy that got my wing since I was goin to "vulch" him......2 and a half hours of nothing...My final fight was a low alt fight while dodging 88mm puffy just crazy.

[Vraciu]

Well, I just mean that if a base is captured and the game has to go beyond the intended range of deactivated bases, then 4-5 new bases will be open for capture so that at least players know where some of the action is but it's not 100% funneled to one base. In real war you have to push back fronts in order to gain territory. You could have the same concept when <100 players are in the arena so that everyone for the most part is fighting in the same 5-6 cubic squares.

Bingo.

[DmonSlyr]

Last night I log in around 2 am CDT 65 folks in the server, go looking for a fight. I find a base flashing, I up to find a 190 porking ords. I Up in my 43 but give up on the chase and land, see a con at a base south of me up an LA5 its a D9 porking ords. Guy hits dar and one ord bunker and with no visible dmg heads for home 7 and a half mins I follow this guy with some alt and unable to gain tried to set up to tag him before he made his ack both of us still doing top speed and both under 1K he makes his turn in the ack outward towards me I try for a shot but as I squeeze the trigger I lose a half wing regain control of the plane and start heading home.....but guess what now this wants to chase me end up auguring after a Yak3 drops on me out of nowhere. Learn through 200 that it was a wirb on the field his buddy that got my wing since I was goin to "vulch" him......2 and a half hours of nothing...My final fight was a low alt fight while dodging 88mm puffy just crazy.

I really do think the radar at bases need to be harder to destroy. It is very difficult for new players as well as in the off hours to find a fight, and when the radar is down you have a 25 mile radius of who knows what, who knows where, with a tiny dar bar. Its kind of not even worth upping if you have no idea what or where they are. Then you roll and its a stupid 15K 190D, its just not even worth it to go fight them.

IMO there are A. too many 190D dweebs, ( no offense, It is a great plane by all means, but too easy to run) minimal skill level needed. Not that anyone can change that, I'm just sayin.

B. Action needs to be easier to find, IE. make the radar harder to destroy so that players in the off hours / new players can find fights easier.



I mean, if you want to be strategic, go NOE and hide under the radar.




Also, I think Special Events need to be posted on the daily message boards when you first enter the game so that people who do not go on the forums know when special events are.

[SPKmes]

Perhaps dynamic down-times... Many times I believe base acquisition is not contemplated due to travel time when the numbers are low (in the 40's).
With a full up strat it can be hard to gather enough force (in some peoples mind) to be successful with a base take... this in turn makes the need for total destruction of strats a requirement... Hence the single dar high alt bombers... yes some are there for the milk run but many are strat runners trying to nail down-times...Now this would mean a dynamic supply would be needed too...but only for player based supply.....(You want to save it supply it)still have supply trucks but they will just have their normal set supply amounts.

Although not a total fix I think it may help with the mind factor that this is possible and not a waste of time with 3-4 guys

Yes that low...because...although the roster says a certain number....not that number are actually in front of their PC playing..(as per other posts)

[VuduVee]

Last night I log in around 2 am CDT 65 folks in the server, go looking for a fight. I find a base flashing, I up to find a 190 porking ords. I Up in my 43 but give up on the chase and land, see a con at a base south of me up an LA5 its a D9 porking ords. Guy hits dar and one ord bunker and with no visible dmg heads for home 7 and a half mins I follow this guy with some alt and unable to gain tried to set up to tag him before he made his ack both of us still doing top speed and both under 1K he makes his turn in the ack outward towards me I try for a shot but as I squeeze the trigger I lose a half wing regain control of the plane and start heading home.....but guess what now this wants to chase me end up auguring after a Yak3 drops on me out of nowhere. Learn through 200 that it was a wirb on the field his buddy that got my wing since I was goin to "vulch" him......2 and a half hours of nothing...My final fight was a low alt fight while dodging 88mm puffy just crazy.

great example of what the game has become and what ive been babbling about. another example of why its the players killing the game and not HTC killing the game. i guarantee that the guy who ran to his hider buddy in the wirb and 88, will immediately jump into the gang bang, but will run every single time he sees a red. in my opinion, its not worth 15 a month wasting time trying to get any sort of action out of these chickens. and these people are the majority of the players in game.

[Vraciu]

great example of what the game has become and what ive been babbling about. another example of why its the players killing the game and not HTC killing the game. i guarantee that the guy who ran to his hider buddy in the wirb and 88, will immediately jump into the gang bang, but will run every single time he sees a red. in my opinion, its not worth 15 a month wasting time trying to get any sort of action out of these chickens. and these people are the majority of the players in game.

It is a matter of numbers no matter how you slice it.

With more numbers per unit of area you will have more fights.   Part of that is due to the limited space.   Part of it is due to the bell curve, law of averages, etc.    The more players we have the more runners *and* non-runners you will find.   If you can't pump up the player/area ratio through numbers you can do it mechanically by shrinking the fight area or incentivizing combat.

Violator has the best solution thus far--dynamic base shut downs as the player base decreases during off-peak times.

[SPKmes]

It is a matter of numbers no matter how you slice it.

With more numbers per unit of area you will have more fights.   Part of that is due to the limited space.   Part of it is due to the bell curve, law of averages, etc.    The more players we have the more runners *and* non-runners you will find.   If you can't pump up the player/area ratio through numbers you can do it mechanically by shrinking the fight area or incentivizing combat.

Violator has the best solution thus far--dynamic base shut downs as the player base decreases during off-peak times.

yes this is true...however.... there were far more fighters than survivalists... it is now turned and there is way more survivalists than fighters and the lower numbers just exasperate this......   

[The Fugitive]

You can't force people to fight! That was one of the reasons the capture chain thing didn't work. What they have to do is make players WANT to fight. Whether it is though perks, bonus points what ever players need some kind of carrot to change them from runners and hiders to fighters.

Maybe put the higher scoring players in late 30s, very early 40s planes to give newer less skilled players a more level playing field. Sure there will be those score potatos that will throw a lot of fights to get them back in there late war monsters but that will still give kills to those who have a hard time getting them.  How they figure who gets the old planes or the newer isn't something I can figure out, Im sure someone who knows the coad can figure a way to set up a handycap system. 

Forcing people only drives them away and at this point it is the last things needed. Tie the win the war to K/D. Players will have to kill more (fight), and not lawndart as often to accumulate the points to win the war with the right number of fields. Again, someone who knows the coad would have to come up with a way to set it up.

The game has all the tools, and all the options for great battles high, low and on the sea. Things have got to be added to the coad to make all these thinks more important to players so they are used instead of players looking for way to get around all of these things and cut corners to get it done the quickest, easiest way.

[caldera]

Hide all scores and ranks until the end of the Tour.   The emphasis should be on fighting, not Vulches/Death, OuterSpaceBombing/Death or Camping/Death.

[Rodent57]

I think The Fugitive is on to something with his thought of make folks want to fight...

What sort of carrot can HTC hold out to make the timid want to bother to engage?

[Bruv119]

I don't know about this,  I've logged minimal hours over the last few months and on the rare occasion that I have got online I've found some good action.  Maybe it just puts things into perspective when you can't play. 

I've noticed quite a few new names or old ones re-incarnated.  It's like they have forgotten all about how not to rope underneath me and to only engage with 3 bodyguards otherwise they are all going to die.   

[VuduVee]

I don't know about this,  I've logged minimal hours over the last few months and on the rare occasion that I have got online I've found some good action.  Maybe it just puts things into perspective when you can't play. 

I've noticed quite a few new names or old ones re-incarnated.  It's like they have forgotten all about how not to rope underneath me and to only engage with 3 bodyguards otherwise they are all going to die.   

Are you saying that people engaged you in a 1v1 instead of a 3v1? Because thats not what i see in game. Most players seem to do exactly the opposite of a 1v1. They run from 1v1s almost every time, and only engage when they have their little helpers around.

[bustr]

Until the numbers on average for the MA are sustained during prime time 300 or higher, changing the auto rotation for maps to 48 hours would by a small thing to help with the low population. Also, smaller maps seem to promote relatively larger late night furballs between two bases like simpizza last night.

I doubt with the smaller numbers we have now days, any person or group is really wedded to the outcomes of any kind of land change initiatives. During the high population days of yore, that was a valid consideration to squad initiatives and the leaders of the giant very popular land conquest missions. Today there are just not the numbers to defend what was captured the night before or, regain what was lost to the milk runners during the off hours.

[The Fugitive]

I think for right now the quickest and easiest fix would be to use only small maps, and maybe bumping the win percentage to 25-30 to help them last a bit longer.

Smaller maps seem to promote more and more areas that fights spring up. They also seem to make NOEs happen less often other than the island maps.

I think a new players loggin over the Christmas "break" may find the game more interesting if there is more action going on. Add in the bigger maps when AH3 comes out.

[Vudak]

I think The Fugitive is on to something with his thought of make folks want to fight...

What sort of carrot can HTC hold out to make the timid want to bother to engage?

Change the way perk points are delivered.  Leave score as is because people enjoy pursuing it.  IIRC landing/living is a good thing for score.

Get rid of the way more perk points are awarded for landing.  Instead simply multiply it by number of kills.  So 4 kills = 4 times (or 2 times, whatever would be balanced) reward, land/bail/or die.  Maybe even scale it so 5 or 10 kills have much more significant rewards.  Still tie it to plane values so people are even more highly rewarded for taking up challenging birds that can't run away easily.

Would this encourage vulching?  Absolutely. But it might also encourage people to try to take on one more fight if they have ammo for it.  They'll have to weigh "name in lights" vs. major increase in perk points.

It's fun to see how many perk points you can get.  I think this would encourage people to shoot other planes more often and even perhaps not gang so bad on one target because the odds of their getting the kill are slim.