Now, before the virtue-signalers swoop in to protect HTC’s honor, I am not intending this as an attack on HTC, or a demand that they change things one way or another. A 3-sided vs 2-sided arena design is just an interesting game design question and I have an interest in game design, so I am merely intending a rational discussion of the topic as a concept, because I find it interesting. This is a strawman argument. Someone could convince me either way. In the end, I suspect there is not one answer that is best for all player count scenarios.
I’ve never really had a problem with a 3-sided arena. When you had 650 players regularly in the arena, I think it worked well. But seeing so many people wanting a two sided design I’m beginning to question if the 3-sided design still works AS well when numbers are much, much lower than the hay-days. I have begun to wonder if it worked well at the game’s peak for a reason different than Hitech assumed.
As I understand it, Hitech’s argument has been by dividing the players into 3 teams means that mathematically each player has two enemy players to fight. If you have 3 evenly divided teams that is arithmetically obvious. However, it doesn’t consider spatial factors. I have begun wondering if that has important effects that work against his assumption.
In a ground war, planners have the concept of “straightening the line”. This entails taking or releasing territory in order to create a straighter front line that reduces the surface area and allows a higher unit density per mile of frontage.
A thought experiment. Assuming idealized (i.e. not necessarily realistic) conditions.
You have a 512 mi x 512 mi arena. Assume you have 1000 players. I know...work with me.
Generally, the shortest lines you could achieve in a 3-sided war is is to divide the map like a pie chart with three fronts of ~300 mi length. Each side has to cover two fronts. Say they divide their force evenly across both fronts. Each of the !300 mi fronts would involve 1/3 of the total player count. With 1000 players that would create a ~1.11 possible-players-per-mile, or ~1.11 pppm.
If you went to a 2-sided war and ran the front diagonally across the map, you would end up with ~1.3 pppm.
If you went to a 2-sided war and ran the front horizontally or vertically across the map, you would end up with ~1.9 pppm.
So, a 2-sided war with a horizontal or vertical front provides 173% higher pppm density than a 3-sided arena. I assume that ENY and other tools could maintain a 2-sided area as balanced as a 3-sided. Even if it came down to only allowing new logons to go to a lower count side.
When we literally had too many players in an arena on a good night, a 3-sided war probably helped distribute the action more evenly to make full use of the map.
When you don’t have enough players, maybe it tends toward making the action feel “thin”.
Now implementation is a complete separate discussion. Maybe they could create a test map and disable all planes and vehicles for one team and put all their stuff in one corner of the map and surround it with 1000 acks and just lay the other two sides out. Just as a test for a week. That might gather the data they need to decide if they ever want to make code changes to support two-sided arenas in a win-the-war environment.
Ideally, you would want to be able to support both depending on the map design and the player count needs.
This has nothing to to with AvA or rolling plane-sets.
Food for thought.
[edit]
Sorry. that should have been phrase a 2-sided design has 173% of the density of a 3-sided. So 73% higher? I have never been good with percentages. Snailman??? But it is a higher density.
