Furball Arena

[CptTrips]

Don't know what I'd do if I were you.  There are so many different opinions about what would make a good furball arena, and many people have "hard pass" settings.

Yeah, well, I don't really have a dog in the fight.  I was just someone who was capable to setup a quick test environment to allow DmnSlyer and others test out some of their theories rather than try and convince Hitech to make changes to the MP without any concrete evidence.

I don't think a Furball arena is too bad an idea.  I used to occasionally have 30 min of fun in the old one.  That was about how long it took me to get bored.  That's not a bad thing.  I can go play WW1WF for about 30 min too.  Or dink making myself some custom AI missions to play offline. Nowadays, 30 min is about my boredom threshold for everything.  Except maybe BF4. 

I'm not sure Hitech should remove the AI from the one in the MP.  There may not always be people around and a player could at least go in there and Furball the AI for a bit late at night.

$0.02.



 

[DmonSlyr]

Lets see what happens with it this weekend. I'll pop on late tomorrow night when I normally play. I think if we got 3-5 players in there it would start to pick up some pace.

[CptTrips]

Lets see what happens with it this weekend. I'll pop on late tomorrow night when I normally play. I think if we got 3-5 players in there it would start to pick up some pace.

Yep.  I'm going out of town for a couple of days starting Sat.  I'll just leave it up.  When I get beack we can discuss if further test iterations are useful.

[FESS67]

I have dipped in and out of both threads associated with this topic.

AH3 Did not create any declining numbers. AH Numbers started shrinking in Feb of 2009. The dueling  arena used to be populated but ah3 had no effect on it. When the changes were made to match play, the dueling arena was completely empty. So why would I believe a return to a setup that was always empty not always be empty now?

HiTech

HiTech you appear to be able to pull usage stats so maybe you can tell if the match play arena is more or less used than the old DA.  That would be my starting point for a potential return to that setup (minus the water).  Now, on that point, my experience (memory is not great but I believe this to be the case) was that when AH3 came out the water lacked any depth perception and so it was impossible to determine if you were 2 feet or 200 feet off the waves.  The result was a lot of hard splashdowns and frustration that perhaps lead to people not going there as much.

When was the last time you were in there?

Because  the AI are only in p51s, and they do not fly very well. Plus only 2 will ever attack you at one time?

The change was made  in February.

HiTech

I actually LOL'd when I read this.  HiTech, you created what has got to be possibly the worst WW2 flying experience ever with the crazy AI and the very very odd flight model.  We tried it, several times.  I tried it maybe 10 times and it was terrible.  Are you really surprised we did not go back in there for months and months?  I cannot imagine what someone new to AH would have thought but if your long time clients never went back I assume the new blood walked away.  The addition of AI was brilliant and IMO could have been a godsend in the quiet times.  Getting fighter action against AI would have been so much fun but then it turned out to be so far from reality it was a real turn off.  I can only imagine your mind went back to those heady days of Air Warrior and the Deathstar B17's.  Thing is back then it was new to everyone and the flight model was secondary to the fun of being online and doing that sort of thing.

I do think the Ai aspect is worth exploring though, even incorporating it into the MA for buffs and fighters but they have to be within the same flight model and skill vector as your average player.

[CptTrips]

I do think the Ai aspect is worth exploring though, even incorporating it into the MA for buffs and fighters but they have to be within the same flight model and skill vector as your average player.

Have you tried the Offline 4x4 Dogfight missions I made?

I hand tweaked those to what I thought was reasonable.  Maybe on the easy side, because I wanted them to be used my noobs for practice.
I definitely found AI had to be hand tweaked to get the feel I wanted.  And per aircraft type.  I had to tweak a I-16 to different settings than a P-51 to get effect I wanted.

 

[CptTrips]

So I ran it pretty 24/7 from last Thurs. through the weekend. 

I monitored it from time to time.  I saw a few people pop in.  A couple of you got some fights going.  The few that tried it seemed to like it, but not a lot of interest was shown to try it.

It's somewhat hidden on the Player tab, but this thread pointed out where it was, and to make sure, I posted a notice on the General forum so we at least knew a number of people were aware of it.

I don't think the idea was bad.  I think it was a reasonable setup for furballing.  I think it would work, though we could debate plane-sets, etc.  So there might be tweaks to the arrangement and settings to optimize it, but optimization wasn't the problem.  The setup makes no difference if no one will go in.

Would it make a difference if I left it up a month?  <Shrug.>  Would it make a difference if it was a link off the front tab? <Shrug.>

I remember there used to be a constant population of regulars at the furball lake back in 2010-11.  But this is not the same community we had in 2010.  A lot of those people are not here, so maybe you can't re-capture the past.

If there is something else specific you want me to try still, we can.  Otherwise I don't see any further advantage of continuing the test.

I think you are just hitting the Melee wall.  Habit is just too ingrained.  It's almost impossible to get them to click on anything else.

Like why can't the AvA not generate any traffic at all?  I understand MNM and Tank Night are fun, but honestly, that really isn't what the mandate of the Ava was supposed to be.  It seems to me those would more logically just be run in the SEA.  I'm not against those events, it just points out a mystery on why something like even the AvA (in a community supposedly of WWII enthusiast) can't pull even a portion of the traffic from the Melee except for an occasional event that only barely has anything to do with AvA.  You'd think all those guys who currently only play Scenarios and FSO and eschew the Melee might at least keep a presence there in between events.   

Anyway... on the Furball Arena...

Maybe if you was run on a special night, or on Sunday afternoons or something at a fixed time, you could market it and drum up a collection of players would would show up for that as regulars.  That is not an effort I'm interested in pursuing, but if one of want to pursue it, I will teach you to fish rather than giving you a fish. 

The terrain is loaded on the server. (Actually I have a new version with a few final teaks DemnSlyr suggested.) If DemnSlyr or Bixbie, or someone was interested in grabbing this and running with it and try and build it up, I can get you the arena config files and make you a step-by-step instructions on how to set it up and run it in your own Custom Arena when you want.  I'm not interested in taking that on, but I will help one of you take it over if you want to continue it.  Maybe you can build a Sunday afternoon Furball club or something.

Any takers?




 

[Shuffler]

I never checked it out. It was well intentioned but some folks just pushed it out from the basic furball setup.

I figured they might show up to fill it.

[CptTrips]

I never checked it out. It was well intentioned but some folks just pushed it out from the basic furball setup.

I figured they might show up to fill it.

well, what constitutes the "Basic Furball Setup"?

If you were configuring it, what would it look like?

[DmonSlyr]

Honestly I just feel like it wasn't seen by most because its on a different tab and most people don't even see those tabs..

All it takes is for 3-4 people to be in there before 5-10 show up. I just feel like if the "all" tab isnt the default, than 95% of the players won't see it before they click on the MA.

I didn't get to play the nights this weekend. I really only get a few hours if I am lucky to play on the weekends. I just dont have the time to keep a custom MA open.

Id say keep it open for another 2 weeks. Perhaps it just needs to gain some popularity thru word of mouth or something. Once we get some regulars who are in there quite a bit, then the #s will grow as there will always be players in there.


 

[CptTrips]

Honestly I just feel like it wasn't seen by most because its on a different tab and most people don't even see those tabs..

That definitely is a factor.  I saw one player post recently who had been here since 2008 and didn't even know we had Custom Arena or what they were.   

But this thread had 296 views and the thread in the general had 211 views.  With repeat traffic, I'd assume at least 80 people know that arena was going to be up all weekend and where to go find it.  So that would argue toward low interest.

Of course timing is everything.  Players may have gone over to the tab and saw there were no other players based on the count listing and never even click on it.  So there you have the chicken or the egg paradox.  No one goes in, because no one is in.  And no one is in because no one goes in.

That is sort of what I was trying to defeat with the idea of AI augmented arena.  So a single player could go in and have stuff to do whether other players were in there yet or not.  So maybe Hitech has the right idea of having AI until the second person logs in.  So if Hitech just added that logic to MP is that enough?

Personally, I had a hard time understanding what was going on in the MP arena.  It wasn't clear what you were supposed to do or why.  And there were some weird behaviors. If seemed like an awkward interface.  But hey, different strokes, different folks.

Id say keep it open for another 2 weeks. Perhaps it just needs to gain some popularity thru word of mouth or something. Once we get some regulars who are in there quite a bit, then the #s will grow as there will always be players in there.

Well I'll try and keep it running a bit longer.  I don't know if that will be two weeks.  Damn thing keeps kicking me off occasionally with a "Host Connection Lost"  and I either have to catch that immediately and just back in, or restart it up and reconfigure again.  That might get old baby sitting it every second before two more weeks.

 

[Shuffler]

well, what constitutes the "Basic Furball Setup"?

If you were configuring it, what would it look like?

Take off and fight. Keep it low so no b&z. Maybe 2 bases close together. They can be the same side. Griever can't cover 2 bases.

Just seemed folks talked about close in furballing and then want more room to do it in.

[CptTrips]

Take off and fight. Keep it low so no b&z. Maybe 2 bases close together. They can be the same side. Griever can't cover 2 bases.

Just seemed folks talked about close in furballing and then want more room to do it in.

That'd be fine by me.  It'd be easy to configure.  I've already added a second base, I just take off the air spawns.

4k cap?

But would that have changed how many people went into the arena?  Whats the point if no one goes in? 
You think they didn't go in because of the configuration?

[CptTrips]

OK.  We ran the other configuration since last Thurs.

So I've set it up as Shuffler suggested and we can try that a while.  We are here to test stuff.

Two fields, no air spawn.  Alt cap at 6k, but the fields are at 1k so the alt cap is ~5k AGL.

[Shuffler]

Just finished up MNM.

Will check it out tomorrow evening myself, probably around 7 or so I should be there.

[Bixby]

Hello Shuffler. Just left MNM. was fun.

I'll be in CptTrips furball arena tomorrow night also. Nice arena , just needs people.