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

[Wiley]

I am not sure I understand the OP.  Everyone agrees that the drop in player numbers lessens the appeal of AH.  But I don't understand what you want done about it?  You seem to dislike GVs and that implies you think removing GVs will somehow increase numbers.  Will it not just reduce numbers?  About 25% of AH players are in GVs at any point in time, take that away and you'll probably lose up to 25% of the player base and not force those people into airplanes.  AH is an open sand-box where players can pretty much do whatever they want.  Perhaps you could increase the "fights" by being like other games and forcing players into localized timed missions.  I personally prefer the open sand-box, but the alpha has the future possibility of host generated missions including AI to increase targets.  Using smaller maps makes sense, but how do you do that without just removing all large maps from rotation (thereby denying them to US prime time players where the numbers are larger).

The underlying problem is a drop in the number of players in general and European players in particular.  How does HTC fix that?  Well a start is making the game appear more modern in visual appeal, and with the alpha, they are doing just that.  What attracts people to a game they are unfamiliar with is it's appearance, if it looks outdated they may never even try it.  Of course, once they do try it, then other factors, like game play or community character, come into play. 

What are other factors in the drop off of European players and how can they be countered?

Well, by the look of it the OP's point is pretty much that there's too much diversity of gameplay which spreads the current players too thin.  Personally, I think it would be kind of nice to know when I log in that if the number of players says 200, it's 200 people that are actually interested in flying airplanes with and against me.  If it says 15, then at least I'd be able to make an educated decision on whether I want to log in as well.

It seems to me that a lot of people seem to want to log into "Entertainment Game" that does everything they might want to do.  You can see it in here with people wanting artillery, subs, ships, FPS play, 1946 arenas, Vietnam arenas, Modern Combat arenas, Air Traffic Controller Hero, Mechanic Funtime Island Adventure, etc etc etc.

I'd be ecstatic with a game that only had mannable WWII aircraft that gave me 50 people per side looking to fight and bomb stuff more or less together but in an open world.  I realize apparently not everybody's up for that though.

Open world full on PvP simply put, is not popular at this time.  It's a niche market.  For me, nothing else is as good.  For many, they'd rather have rounds based gameplay like WT and WoT.

What I live in fear of is that to survive, AH3 will become more like WT and depending what they choose to change, might turn me off the game completely.

Wiley.

[Chilli]

Unfortunately slipknot....{snip}.... The map up at the moment is the worst for our timezone (our = south pacific) sooooo many high alt bomber guys .... and if there is an inkling of an enemy con the fights are gone... to be fair there are some who like to have a bit of actual PvP but even these people are becoming less and less..... damn man...highlight o my login time sometimes is searching for cybro in his jeep...but even he is just sitting in field hangers most of the time now...

Tongs has pretty much wrapped up the scenario quite well.  I will have to add, that the time of flight to a fight determines how willing I am at returning to repeat good air to air action, especially against Tongs   

So, that's not so bad if I have a few hours away from that sort of thing as described above, BUT............  7 days is TOO DAMN long. 

Wiley,
I would not care to even try and guess where AH3 is going, even after having been involved with alpha testing from the onset.  Let's be fair and say that it looks pretty darn awesome, and gameplay whether or not it stays the same or changes will still have a period of adjustment for a number of reasons.  Waiting, is not my strong suit so, I will stop any further public contemplation of how leet I will become in the next version.

[Copprhed]

It's very rare that I don't get some kind of opposition even in the "off" hours. If I don't see air cons up, I go get a gv, and go to a base. Usually the first thing I kill is the dar. That's a HEY I'M HERE" thing to do. More often than not, someone comes to defend. Hearing the same old complaints by people who refuse to do anything but dogfight, when there ARE other options and saying "SOMEONE HAS TO DO SOMETHING!" gets old, but they're right, someone DOES have to do something...the ones who insist on doing one thing need to learn to adapt.

[redbelly]

HTC needs to step up the advertisement campaign.  I got turned on to the game years ago from the advertisement on the History channel and it was probably a time when AH was at its best.  You’re not going to get new players if they have no way of hearing about the game.  A new version of the game is not going to be any better if there is nobody in the arena to play.   Wake up HTC!

[Wiley]

It's very rare that I don't get some kind of opposition even in the "off" hours. If I don't see air cons up, I go get a gv, and go to a base. Usually the first thing I kill is the dar. That's a HEY I'M HERE" thing to do. More often than not, someone comes to defend. Hearing the same old complaints by people who refuse to do anything but dogfight, when there ARE other options and saying "SOMEONE HAS TO DO SOMETHING!" gets old, but they're right, someone DOES have to do something...the ones who insist on doing one thing need to learn to adapt.

 

Explain in detail how it is up to anybody to do something they do not desire to do with their entertainment time.

Wiley.

[Vraciu]

It's very rare that I don't get some kind of opposition even in the "off" hours. If I don't see air cons up, I go get a gv, and go to a base. Usually the first thing I kill is the dar. That's a HEY I'M HERE" thing to do. More often than not, someone comes to defend. Hearing the same old complaints by people who refuse to do anything but dogfight, when there ARE other options and saying "SOMEONE HAS TO DO SOMETHING!" gets old, but they're right, someone DOES have to do something...the ones who insist on doing one thing need to learn to adapt.

Your position is flawed in many respects.  Here are three. 


You are not online 24-7 yet you state a certainty using  your definition of off hours (which clearly does not match the definition of same as posted in this thread).    Fallacy one.

Your anecdotal experience does not match the overwhelming trend as explained by the OP.   Fallacy two. 

"There are options for those who can't find a dogfight in a dogfighting game for those who pay TO DOGFIGHT."  Fallacy three.

[Vraciu]

Explain in detail how it is up to anybody to do something they do not desire to do with their entertainment time.

Wiley.

I am intrigued as well. 

[FESS67]

To be honest I do not know what the answer is.

I know I logged in to an arena with 45 players and I switched to the side with 9.  I went to the low numbered team in the hope of a fight.

I found one early on but it must have been close to their bed time because they logged after the fight.

After that fights were hard to come by.

I offered to go to the DA and have fun but as you will see from my other thread that got misunderstood <sigh>

My solution would be to compress the fight into a smaller area.  Close rear bases, have some sort of supply system that means only certain bases can be used / hurt at any one time.  I know people will not like it because it means they will no longer be able to 'sneak' bases------I call that taking undefended bases but sneak makes it sound more meaningful I guess-------

Compressing the fight IMO would promote the fight.  Why the hell do we need 200+ bases anyway?

[mbailey]

HTC needs to step up the advertisement campaign.  I got turned on to the game years ago from the advertisement on the History channel and it was probably a time when AH was at its best.  You’re not going to get new players if they have no way of hearing about the game.  A new version of the game is not going to be any better if there is nobody in the arena to play.   Wake up HTC!

Now is the wrong time to spend money advertising....... Once the new version is out, that's when you would want to spend the money.

[Max]

I have an idea to promote fights. Two countries and a 1 hour switch time.   

As a subscriber of almost 14 years, I agree with this suggestion. I've become fed-up with 20+ ENY limitations most mornings (EST) when I log on and find myself moving over to the MW arena. If nothing else, consider an option along these line for AH3. IMHO, capture the flag or steal the sheep isn't going to impact a difference.

[Lusche]

My solution would be to compress the fight into a smaller area.

The AH community apparently voted against that a few weeks ago.

[Max]

Huh? What did I miss?

[Lusche]

Huh? What did I miss?

An in game poll which ran for a weekend, asking if the large maps should still be kept in rotation.

[Latrobe]

The whole ENY thing with fewer than 50 people online always confused me. I've seen it a couple times where the numbers looked something like Knights - 10, Bish - 7, Rook - 8 IN FLIGHT yet the Knights would have an ENY of 15 or something because the numbers logged in were Knights - 21, Bish - 11, Rooks - 10. This, I think, comes down to the people who, for whatever reason, don't log off after they're done playing. Be it because they went AFK and forgot, want the 25 free perks if their team wins the war, or are just letting the game download skins. This is a whole other topic that can be discuss though.


Coppr, the thing is everyone is different. Some people are like you and are adaptive. They like many different aspects of this game. Not everyone is like this though. Some people just enjoy a certain part of the game. Some just like the aerial combat part, some just like gving, some just like to bomb targets, some like ground attack operations, or they could like a select combination of any of these aspects. You can tell someone to just GV if there's no air combat going on but if they're not a GV type person then they're just not going to  have fun. It's simply not for them.

From what I remember the gv combat is still fairly active, as is bombing and ground attack stuff as bases and ground target are always there 24/7. The area that I have noticed a massive drop in over the years is Aerial Combat. Unlike bombing which only needs static ground objects for you to be successful and have fun, aerial combat requires another human player on the other end to fight against, and those kinds of people are rapidly disappearing from the game. GVing, just like aerial combat, requires another human player to fight against to be really fun as well but we don't hear much complaining from them because there are still plenty of gv folks still playing. You don't have to go searching all over the entire map in hopes of maybe finding a gv fight, but a good furball/dogfight you do.

[redbelly]

Now is the wrong time to spend money advertising....... Once the new version is out, that's when you would want to spend the money.

That’s like waiting for Jesus to return before you repent….And God only knows when that will be.  If you want more players, advertise.  The update has nothing to do with it.