What planes and vehicles are you going to limit them to? Is your idea to let them have unlimited access to lower tier planes and vehicles? Bruv was right, unlimited access to the plane set during their 30 day free trial is the way to go.
Personally Id give them a med bomber, the goon, a panzer, and 4-5 fighters. Nothing too "top of the line" but something that they can haul some ords with to be part of the game helping out.
The issue with a "time limit", for me, is the pressure I put on myself to get the time in to have enough playing to decide if I like the game enough. How many others are like me? On top of that you have the big learning curve to the game, not only in just getting off the ground, but the fighting and general game play mechanics with very little easy to use help. I think if a player has no pressure of a time limit they will be more likely to spend more time trying it.
fugi just using your quote as I know you were on 2/24/18 between 7pm and 9:30ish pm EST.
lets say 5 guys downloaded the game and began to try to play the game. do you (fugi) think that would have been a great showing of the game? over the knight bish front there was a solid dar over a90 which they would not leave and the bish had two carriers of the coast which none of the bish would leave there friendly ack of the boat. on the bish rook front there was double dar bars over both bases I believe a59 and a60 which very few bish was upping in. so the actual aerial combat last for two hours for me was either up and fly to 90 and go into the 8 planes hovering over 90 and get mauled or up at either 59 and 60 only to be pounced on 2k off the deck trying to get into a fight. I am kinda of use to this (all be it very tired of it) but a new guy that has never played this game what does this look like to him? how does he feel about the air combat in the game? does he fly around for 25 min looking for a fight that really does not exist unless its over a boat and enemys field were all of them have climbed to 15k to pounce on the first possible red plane that dare comes near the dar ring?
this really is a great game for the person that is looking for a aerial combat game, easy to fly planes (once beyond the initial set up) great community communication, and a fully equipped stall of airplanes to be chosen from. the gameplay I believe is whats truly hurting the game right now. the consistent double hoarding of countries, the constant runners and pickers that are notorious in every group fight. game play is something we can control as players and need no wishlist or update for. by human nature though it seems 90% will all ways take the easy route (safest maybe better) to avoid being shot down in a cartoon air combat simulator. these are only my personal thoughts and points of reference as they occurred last night and after 2 hrs of watching a 1/2 attempted 2 or 3 plane battle flame up on the rook knight front at a45 to only fizzle quickly and see the remaining dars over both fronts on the bish side continue to grow I logged off as many others before me had. unless we as players take to helping even out fighting a little bit when we do have the "numbers" in the latter part of the day you are going to continue to loose players both long standing and new guys do the lack of aerial combat, whick I believe is what most join up for to later find the gvs and ships and field guns.
and again I understand at times things will dissolve to a country being hoarded for certain amount of time but as I have mentioned in other threads there seems be one country that is the receiving end of this during EST prime time and is causing a lot of guys to log, not play or cancel accts due to the lack of actually being able to find a "fight" that is actually fightable. just my thoughts for existing players and new players logging in for the first few times. if we can get the new guys past that 20 min window we need to offer more than what we offering in terms of fighting.
Actually last night was one of the few nights recently, where I had a lot of fun. 60 was a great fight. The Bish defended well. I dont know how many were there, or how many were in GVs but it took a long time to capture that base. 51 fell quickly after that but the Bish counter attacked on the island SE of 60, 61 maybe? And the Rooks had to defend. Again a big battle happened and we pushed them off.
I think most of the game play issues we have today are magnified by the low numbers. If we had twice the number of players playing I think a lot of the issues people complain about would not disappear, but they would be easier to swallow. Sure the Bish may have had both fronts being under attack, but there would have been more fights on the Knit/Rook front as well. While it is human nature to horde up, there comes a point where it isn't fun being the 12th guy in on a single
The hiding in the ack is another one of those things I dont understand. Why up from the CV if all your going to do is circle around in the ack? Again, this is something, as an issue, that would disappear/not be such an issue if we had more numbers. If the numbers doubled I dont think we would have double the guys in the ack, some would actually WANT to come out and fight/play.
Thats why I think the limited group of toys being "free to play" in the MA would help more than hurt. It would increase numbers in the Melee arena which is where we need it. Even if it only converts 5% to subscribers it is more than we have now. Those increases could help across the board. More players join squads, more players learn more and get more interested in playing, more players to join FSO and scenarios. It seems to me a win win with out any down side. HTC already has the servers and infrastructure that can handle the load so it not like they would have to spend money to get it up and running. Some of the coad is already in the game as for "limiting" things so I dont think there would be much coad work for someone of Hitechs skill to set it up.
