Rejuvenate Dueling Arena

[stealth]

The most common thing I hear now about Aces High with a voice of sadness is that the Dueling Arena is dead. I usually see 0 people in the arena and maybe 2 on occasion, very rarely if ever is it above that. However today I started playing got bored and hoped in the DA with 2 other people. Eventually it grew into 5 and we had a good bit of fun. After a bit of brain storming I came up with an idea or two; for kick starting the DA to its former glory, or if anything just get it functional again with people to play in it. One fairly simple idea I had was to just change the name to the DA on a certain day. Something like "Weekend Duel Madness" or whatever floats your boat. I noticed this boosted the MA way back when there was a "Titanic Tuesday", it sorta just gave people an excuse to go check out what all the hub bub is about and play for a bit. It also might give an excuse for people to have a squad night in there. Which leads me to my second idea, to have a leader board like system in the DA for a person against person or squad against squad like fight. Where you could see on your clipboard how many wins and losses a particular team had.

Now I don't have all the answers to do anything about the DA and obviously this is just kinda of a last ditch effort to add some extra fun before AH3 comes out. However I hope this effort to improve the Dueling Arena continues and any ideas I can't come up with the rest of you could fill in. Anyway what you all think of my idea?

[BowHTR]

Titanic Tuesday was popular because it was the only day that there wasn't 2 main arenas. It was more than just a name change. As far as trying to get the DA back up and running, try getting in on the Beta right now. Its basically like the DA most times.

[puller]

I saw you talking about this DA idea last night on channel....

Titanic Tuesday was what it was because it was TITANIC!!!!....I remember nights where there were 700+ people....I always made sure I was on early on Tuesday just for the huge furballs for hours...

Now back to the DA thing......Your ideas are great but you talk about unhealthy having some type of leaderboard and competition in the DA it will ruin the whole spirit of the DA...Instead of the DA being where friends are made it will be the land of trash talking and picking instead of good natured fights where enemies become friends after hours of endless fights where the score doesn't matter...

I would be interested in joining in, in your DA thing...I can bring the squad too...as we end up in the DA before and after FSOs on Fridays most usually...

[FLS]

Why not just ask somebody to go to the DA? If they aren't interested ask someone else.

[Randy1]

The new AH3 version may work better. 

It was so bizarre the last time I was there in the ah2 DA about a year ago.   A couple of well known 190 players playing alt monkeys at 10k+ waiting to pick.  Then they moved to shoot players as they took-off.  I never went back.

The downside of course these people ended up in the MA.

[Ack-Ack]

A name change isn't going to improve the DA one bit.

[The Fugitive]

Monday Night Madness  is held every Monday night in AvA  arena (use to be in the dueling arena but they have more maps and better control in the AvA).  I haven't  been able to get to one yet but I am told a good number of people show and furballing for a couple hours.

[icepac]

Make every plane available at every field.

Many of the planes that aren't available at most of the fields have fighter capability.

[DmonSlyr]

I think it should be a free for all with a rule board and certain mods that could kick vulchers or bad language. There should be 3-5 friendly bases within 8 miles of each other. 0 alt bases.

Then you could have the 1v1 fields to the side.

The free for all model really works the best and creates fights more quickly. It also eliminates ganging with team. It eliminates ack huggers. It allows people to up from any base creating uncertainty, which limits vulching.

It's close to the DA now but 1 team sided and closer together with no alt advantage. It would make a hell of a difference and is an easy change.

[puller]

I think it should be a free for all with a rule board and certain mods that could kick vulchers or bad language. There should be 3-5 friendly bases within 8 miles of each other. 0 alt bases.

Then you could have the 1v1 fields to the side.

The free for all model really works the best and creates fights more quickly. It also eliminates ganging with team. It eliminates ack huggers. It allows people to up from any base creating uncertainty, which limits vulching.

It's close to the DA now but 1 team sided and closer together with no alt advantage. It would make a hell of a difference and is an easy change.

+1 

[bustr]

Once you slap too many rules and enforced requirements on something like the Monday Night Madness, it's going to depopulate down to the same hand full in here complaining about the glory days of the DA. MnM was a blast in the beginning because it had two basic rules; don't fly over 10k and no HOing.

You get about 90 minutes of loose even sided semi compliance, then one side ganged up on the low number side which usually ended up with DA types being taken down like a wolf pack vs. a moose. The less skilled will not ever go to the DA and learn ACM. They want fun now and will answer skill with a hoard. Now MnM has gotten a bit stiffer and the spontaneity fun is slowly being squeezed out of it. And yes, it had the danger of turning into Furball Lake light early on without some rules but, Furball Lake used to have a large full time following of none dueling or wanting to learn ACM addicts.

You guys keep trying to define unstructured furballing and dueling as the same beast by forcing the furballing to act like dueling by enforcing rules. They are different and that's why unstructured furballing has always attracted quick numbers for a few hours. Then some nanny goes and iron fists the fun out of existence if that unstructured pick up game lasts for a few months.

The only players dueling makes happy are duelers. Once you structure a once unstructured pickup furball night into a poorly camouflaged dueling event, you loose the most attractive part of the original pick sessions: Numbers. The casual player will not keep returning to an event where he can tell from looking in the roster he's a minnow in a shark pond. That is not what he pays $14.95 a month for.

At this point you should simply move MnM into the DA and pull off the camouflage.

[DmonSlyr]

Once you slap too many rules and enforced requirements on something like the Monday Night Madness, it's going to depopulate down to the same hand full in here complaining about the glory days of the DA. MnM was a blast in the beginning because it had two basic rules; don't fly over 10k and no HOing.

You get about 90 minutes of loose even sided semi compliance, then one side ganged up on the low number side which usually ended up with DA types being taken down like a wolf pack vs. a moose. The less skilled will not ever go to the DA and learn ACM. They want fun now and will answer skill with a hoard. Now MnM has gotten a bit stiffer and the spontaneity fun is slowly being squeezed out of it. And yes, it had the danger of turning into Furball Lake light early on without some rules but, Furball Lake used to have a large full time following of none dueling or wanting to learn ACM addicts.

You guys keep trying to define unstructured furballing and dueling as the same beast by forcing the furballing to act like dueling by enforcing rules. They are different and that's why unstructured furballing has always attracted quick numbers for a few hours. Then some nanny goes and iron fists the fun out of existence if that unstructured pick up game lasts for a few months.

The only players dueling makes happy are duelers. Once you structure a once unstructured pickup furball night into a poorly camouflaged dueling event, you loose the most attractive part of the original pick sessions: Numbers. The casual player will not keep returning to an event where he can tell from looking in the roster he's a minnow in a shark pond. That is not what he pays $14.95 a month for.

At this point you should simply move MnM into the DA and pull off the camouflage.

That's why I think my opinion should be considered. It basically limits everything you said because there will be less team gangs, any one can kill any one. No vulching. It would limit alt monkeys. It would make furballs and fighting quicker. It would give new players a chance to learn combat without having to fly around the map directionless. The biggest difference from the old DA is that here is more than 1 base to up from to limit vulching and spread out fighters. I think it would work very well.

[bustr]

Just move the MnM to the DA, it's been rule controlled into a DA clone now.

Most players don't want to learn ACM and they don't want to get into fights they have no chance of winning. They are not paying Hitech for that. In furball groups of similar skill sets, they will fight each other happily all night. Once the dueling sharks find out about the weekly party and start slaughtering the seals, the seals leave and the sharks go back to complaining about the lack of fights in the game and the DA. You are being avoided by choice because it's their $14.95 and they don't get any fun out of being your whipping posts for several hours.

The once happy group of "skill less" seals vote with their feet once DA monsters show up to take the fun out of their furball. That has ever been what happens in this game and to a degree why WT has a player base. As long as players like yourself are a random negative thing to get slaughtered by occasionally, and not an all night suicide fest, the seals are happy to play in the MA. Once they are trapped in a small air space like MnM and cannot get away from you, they leave.

I am amazed after all of these years that you guys never catch on, you are victims of your own success.

[icepac]

We need a couple of 30k bases since much of WWII combat occurred at 30k and higher.

[DmonSlyr]

Just move the MnM to the DA, it's been rule controlled into a DA clone now.

Most players don't want to learn ACM and they don't want to get into fights they have no chance of winning. They are not paying Hitech for that. In furball groups of similar skill sets, they will fight each other happily all night. Once the dueling sharks find out about the weekly party and start slaughtering the seals, the seals leave and the sharks go back to complaining about the lack of fights in the game and the DA. You are being avoided by choice because it's their $14.95 and they don't get any fun out of being your whipping posts for several hours.

The once happy group of "skill less" seals vote with their feet once DA monsters show up to take the fun out of their furball. That has ever been what happens in this game and to a degree why WT has a player base. As long as players like yourself are a random negative thing to get slaughtered by occasionally, and not an all night suicide fest, the seals are happy to play in the MA. Once they are trapped in a small air space like MnM and cannot get away from you, they leave.

I am amazed after all of these years that you guys never catch on, you are victims of your own success.

I seemingly disagree Bustr. The new players want action. The new players like Quick action moreso than the older chess piece type players who like to win the war and know how to play the game.. The problem is that the new players are stuck in the vast MA with no idea about how to find action or create it. Then they fly for 20 minutes to a base that's far away, die in seconds, and feel as though they just wasted 25 minutes of their time. Or they fly high and fast in easy planes to avoid dying and wasting 16 minutes to get to that alt. They get bored or its too slow for them and they leave if their is little action with far away bases. It's a hard game for people who know how to play it, it's an even really freaking harder game for the new guys.

The DA I have thought of still allows the MA to stay the same. The DA now allows for players to create fights more quickly and communicate much easier to players to learn the fundamentals of the game better. This really helped me learn the game in FFA H2H because they action was condensed and I could find people to shoot at much more easily.

You see, I got my bellybutton handed to me by Yaws in the 109 for months and months in H2H before I started to get better.  Dieing was not the problem. I had fun because I could find people to fight agaisnt more quickly and I wasn't getting ganged all the time.  When you eliminate the reasons why people gang, why they have to fly high to avoid dying so quickly, why people have to vulch, and the other strategic parts of the MA that cause this action, then you have a furball/DA arena where people are challenged in fighter planes and can find action more easily. The best way to do this is to do what I wrote above. It makes all the sense in the world to me.