Exactly, which is why I say by its very nature this game will just never be that popular. IMO by changing it to be like those other games, it's effectively the same as shutting it down and creating a new game.
Would you prefer HTC to shut down and have no AH at all as opposed to changing something?
It won't happen tomorrow, but eventually it hits some critical mass and then everyone leaves at once. Just ask MySpace.
Giving people a world and letting their emergent behavior create gameplay is just not sufficient for today's gamer.
AS I stated, there is a huge amount of emergent behavior in games like BF. People come up with stuff the designers could never have imagined.
It's just that a map doesn't drag on for a week with no resolution.
You rank up a class based on earning points for kills, capturing bases, and winning the match. I don't think you get penalized for dying. They want to promote action, not timid loss aversion.
As you move up in rank, certain more advanced weapons are unlocked that you can purchase with your earned points. So yeah, you get better players with better weapons. War is Hell. You can't buy more advanced weapons. They tried to sneak a little of that into Star Wars Battlefront and got burned alive.
They balance side numbers. some servers will attempt to balance skill levels and some will shuffle players, squads between matches to keep evening things up. If things get too uneven, players just log off, just like in AH.
In the first 6 years or so I played AH starting in 1999, there were enough planes in the arena to blot out the sun.
I left for a while and came back when WWI was first introduced. There were still (Lusche?) 350 or so on a good night. I was kinda concerned but there was still fun to be had.
I left for a while and came back when I saw AH had VR support. On a really good night there are what? 180? There is still fun to be had if you are really patient, but it is getting thin.
Back when they first split the LW I would get infuriated and logged if I couldn't get in to the main LW and got shunted off the the spill over that only had 180 people on it. LOL. Now those numbers are an occasion for Shuffler to come on the BBS and brag about the big turn out.
On most nights it's more like 150?
You don't have to be Lusche to grasp the implications of that trend line. Luckily for HTC, they have a stubborn clientele so that slope is shallow, so they have so time to re-vector. But I'm afraid of someday tripping that critical mass trigger.
What was that Hemingway line about how a character went bankrupt?
"Slowly at first. Then suddenly."
I'd like to see that not happen, even if that means change over time. They are a home-town company. I've always rooted for them and always will.