Does AHIII Have The Numbers Anymore?

[Mano]

back to the topic ......... Vance.

Build it they will come.   

Numbers have been getting better. Lots of old call signs coming back along with many new players.
You don't have to get an expensive motherboard or cpu, just get a good video card. It is fun to run AH III with
all the eye candy turned all the way up.

Glad to see you are keeping an eye on AH.

 

[bustr]

Activity instigates responsive activity in games.

Right now we are stagnant in terms of activity and numbers are not the problem. Reasons to become active are the problem. Numbers in our current case dictate how long active participation will take place. Any attack on a field to capture it these days has about a 10-15 minute window of activity we remember as normal from 10 years ago. Then the energy and willingness to stay active drops off. Unless the conditions for a capture are so close and the enemy at that field are in full on vulch victim mode. If not, and the enemy responds with numbers at the field or with altitude from another field, the activity is abandoned as a lost cause. Then back to waiting for someone to initiate more activity or people get bored and log for the night.

Make air fields easier to capture by reducing the town down percentage so the active 10-15 minutes matches the willingness to stay with the activity.

I no longer know anyone who thinks capturing any base in today's MA can be accomplished with large numbers against all of the ducks that have to be lined up just to get troops into the map room. And a similar large number of defenders keeping the ducks out of reach. Why attempt to do something that has a greater chance of stalemating and making you feel like the game wants you to fail while getting picked to death? I used to think base taking failure was just the knights all getting to be "been there done that" middle aged keystone cops. When POTW moved over to rooks, the rooks have the same attitude about base captures as the knights. So much of the time, like the knights, the rooks are boring and do nothing. Except for those few nights a week all the knights or all the rooks happen to show up at the same place as a country and hoard swamp the target.

The last adjustment to 20% of the town down was when 400 players a night was normal. It was proportional to the population both sides of a fight could bring to the fight. Today much of the MA is scaled for a 400 a night population that took bases quickly and kept activity going all night. At maybe 200 a night, some of the scale needs to be adjusted to speed up activity and not bore or frustrate the smaller numbers. Earlier I suggested lower the town down percentage to match the activity window in the MA so players can start feeling like they are accomplishing something more than playing keystone cop failures.

And so what if it makes it easier during off prime time for three guys to flip a map. The next day the new map will still have to lower town down percentage so the prime time guys can feel good about their time investment in the game.

     

[Vraciu]

The eye candy on the terrain alone is worth the price of admission.  Ack hugging is worse than ever thanks to the insane accuracy and damage rendered by the autoguns...  The 88mm point and click crowd is also annoying.  But the game is still fun.

Hopefully numbers continue to rise.

Come give it a whirl.

[8thJinx]

You know what's missing the most?

Berms.

[49ZERO]

The future of war gamming is the free to play and the pay to win. The free to play gives you the numbers to have many targets. The pay to win gives you better tools and keeps the game financed. I still pay my 15 dollars per month because its really nothing to me. I only plan on attending ETs memorial flight. The lack of players and the evolution of a single player game has caused me to lose interest. I always believed in a team based war game where one country battles another to the victory requirements. I have found a free to play and pay to win game where players on both sides fight for victory conditions but must work together to achieve it. If I want a better chance at doing good I can pay money but its still up to skill to take advantage of it. Over the years Ive seen this game progress to solo achievements and not doing things together. What we have now is a more visually pretty aces high 2 that has a hardcore population of solo players or players that play together in small groups. The 600 double late arenas where countries clashed for supremacy are long gone. If aces high 3 wants to provide a true massive war game with new blood they need to entertain a free play system with the ability to still make a income and possible a much larger income.

[lunatic1]

So old friend, what say you?

oh hell P.S.
you can check films and screenshots and AH3 on youtube to fights and see what terrains look like.

here's a list of the maps we have now--SFMA-NDISLES-CRATERMA<--NOT LIKE YOU REMEMBER-MONTIS-THEY JUST BROUGHT SMPIZZA BACK-MINDAO-AND A MAP THAT WAS NOT IN AH2-BUZZSAW Very GV friendly but a lot of people hate it. I liked it when it 1st came out, but now I'm on the fence.

[Shuffler]

I got away from AH when AHIII came out cause I didn't have a machine that would handle it.

I am thinking about building a new machine, but I would be interested in knowing for AHIII has the same kind of numbers on at any given time that was on with AHII?

I am particularly interested in GV'ing.

I don't want to spend a bucket full of $$$'s on a new machine then find out that there are only a handful of people playing the game and 99% of them flying.

What is the general consensus of those who are playing the game on a regular basis these days?

thanks in advance
VanceVP

If your machine would not run AHIII and a simple upgrade would not fix it, then you must have a really old machine. That or when it was new it was at the bottom of the quality scale.

I see over 200 on in the evenings central time.

[bustr]

Small things have always changed MA play focus. I've had 15 years to watch that evolution including 2008 hit everyone in the pocket book across the board in online gaming. So yes FTP took advantage of many not having discretionary income to milk the few who did. Times change, new people are running things effecting income outcomes, people with discretionary income are on the rise and AH is still here with a formula no one else has.

And as I stated, it has always been the small changes Hitech makes that refocuses the game from one screeching group's play style to another louder screeching group's demands. We don't have 400 average a night in the MA, and the base capture mechanism is tuned to that number. The toys and using them has not really changed in 15 years, we still mount up and furball or base take. What has changed is the background function parameters we have to meet to achieve victories other than personal man to man outcomes.

When the downturn happened we were left with a core community of veterans who won't fight if the odds are against them and have the experience to see that quickly. They will show up to a dinner bell for a 10-15 minute window and give everything they have, then runaway and not risk themselves based on their experience. This is the reason the greatest activity generating process in the game stalls out and becomes boring. In 10-15 minutes of all out activity, if you cannot take a base or it turns into a vulch city full of free kills, everyone gets bored and runs away. When we were at an average of 400 a night, the window was 30 minutes because of all the stragglers that would keep showing up to replace those who got bored.

Many of the new AH generation come from games with much faster action turn around times. How do you keep them in this game tuned for an era 10 years ago? A tiny thing can be changed with a large impact on activity in the game. Tune the town down percentage to today's population and time expectations so prime time groups accomplish more. As the population picks up, the town down percentage can always be changed to control outcomes. And all the lone wolf types who want more players to stand and fight, will just like 2002-2007 have tiny hoards to treat like sheep herds to snack on while dumping on base sneaks. And those hoards would be helped with the old school NOE radar parameters.

Our current population is not big enough to abuse these two adjustments, and it took time years ago for that abuse to creep in as the community population grew. So this time around Hitech has the past to tell him when adjustments will need to be applied to a growing population.

[Dundee]

see ghi post.  success is ever increasingly difficult. made worse by strat integration, low down times and supplies.  the most exciting aspect of multi player games has been neutered.  hitech would be good to take the game back to ten years ago, strategically.  though i agree with the general concept of making the base take easier it is time that is the enemy of the vulnerable attacker.

a lack of mission participation and coordination make a dull boy.  this problem of stagnation began long ago. it should be written in the book of dweeb, id check if i did not have to go get a drink right now.

 

I agree........why all the changes to down times...it worked just fine in AH II. Oh.....I forgot we have to preserve the "Fur Ball" so re-sup times have to be shorter. they were -30min down time for every box of cargo dropped. the bombers were still in the air when the 6 boxes had brought thee strat up. It used to be -4 min. for every box in AH II.....They had to close the Early & Mid war to even get the numbers in the main arena to begin with...........Make it visually nice.....but make the play like in AH II done !

[JunkyII]

I agree........why all the changes to down times...it worked just fine in AH II. Oh.....I forgot we have to preserve the "Fur Ball" so re-sup times have to be shorter. they were -30min down time for every box of cargo dropped. the bombers were still in the air when the 6 boxes had brought thee strat up. It used to be -4 min. for every box in AH II.....They had to close the Early & Mid war to even get the numbers in the main arena to begin with...........Make it visually nice.....but make the play like in AH II done !

Show me a single game update and explain it logically where it was made to make the furballers experience better....only one I can think of in the last 10 years was the Matchplay (not including new planes)...

Fact is most updates to gameplay have been to making the war crowd happy and negatively effected the furball crowd...which is why that crowd has left the game in hordes...