Strange how some people are blind to the fact many things have changed in the last year. Including a new game with a new game play format.
HiTech
With the utmost respect, hows that working out for you?
I cant speak for the others voicing opinions here, but for myself I have been happily sending you my $15 every month for more than 18 years. I would love to continue doing so for another 20 years. I love this game! I would have sent you twice as much all those years, but I got in just after the price drop. That being said, lets talk about these updates.
A vast majority of the updates have been bug fixes (
https://www.hitechcreations.com/company-info/news/40-software-updates) a gun elevation change, a couple HUD display changes and so on. Most have been behind the scenes with very little Upfront where the customer can SEE the new stuff. Lusche posted this
chart that shows we havent had an new plane or vehicle since tour 168, 5 years ago. Sure we have had a number of new maps from "Bustr", but from the customers point of view, thats it.
War Online: Pacific, of the 46 reviews posted on Steam most are "negative", granted some are from disgruntled Aces High players, but still not a great showing. War online: Pacific, most would have said would fail anyway as it is a "Furball" setup and so wouldn't hold many players attention for long. It is missing the richness of Aces High. You mentioned at one point that it may be setup to take/make bets of fights. We have seen nothing of this since.
The chart for those playing War Online: Pacific isnt coming up for some reason which showed that last time I check, very poor numbers, but here is one for Aces High
https://steamcharts.com/app/651090#3m Granted it is only showing those that play THROUGH Steam, but it shows 75% less players since it opened 2 years ago on Steam.
Could it be the "flight" games are dying out? This chart shows a pretty steady increase for DCS World over the last 3 months
https://steamcharts.com/app/223750#3m, or IL-2 Sturmovik
https://steamcharts.com/app/307960#3m, so It looks like flight sims are ok. Again these are only showing what passes through Steam, but going by these numbers Aces High has 20x what is shown through Steam, what are the real numbers for DSC and IL-2? 20x there too?
I agree with you a 2 sided arena won't work, but If you run one once a week as say "Red Team", and "Blue Team" to do away with Rook, Knight, Bishop Nations you would have proof for this day and age that it doesnt work..... or would it work?
Adding a few free planes I dont think would be a huge programming issue (what do I know), but doing so for a couple of months wouldnt hurt anything. You are already covering the overhead of running the game, how many "free" players logging on could there be? Right? Certainly not enough to crash your new servers.
Either add in a "mission" program that has missions run in the MA, or hire a few players to run missions at prime times both US and Euro. Build some action in the arenas. Free players add numbers, missions add action. Action and number means more players having fun, generate more fun.