Now you have me very curious, exactly what type of game play do I try force on threw the rules?
HiTech
HiTech, Thanks for asking, and my apologies for not answering sooner. I've been playing and not checking out the message boards, so I'm sorry if I seemed to ignore your post.
You're a smart guy, so the fact that there are eight pages of comments on a post titled "The Maps are Way Too Big" is obviously the most glaring answer to your question. The dozen or so pages of "Let's Write the Future of AH" also shows a community worried about the game's direction.
This is a topic that's been subject of conversation since before I left AH five or so years ago. The fact that it's still being talked about is an indication that you don't particularly see a problem here and don't want to change things no matter how low player numbers go.
That's your prerogative, but if you want new subscribers, (and I really don't think you care either way) you have to realize that spreading out bases and the amount of time between flights prevents new players from ever developing the air combat skills needed to become long-time clients. Time flown between fights is a huge determinant of fun in a game. Any developer knows that. You've decided that's not an issue for AH. No one is going to continue flying four or five minutes so some old guy who has been playing this game for 10-20 years can bounce them and feel good about it. Each time that happens you've made an old coot happy, but you've lost a new client - most likely someone who has been playing other online games, wanted to up their game to even more realism, but was defeated by AH's desire to cater to the desires of its small and shrinking base for easy meat. Short flights give folks the opportunity to develop and the fun to keep them interested. But you already know that.
I think about my own experience. I was one of your first subscribers. I loved playing AH and would spend hours jumping on, getting shot down and doing it again. I still remember the first time I dove on a B-17, shot out its left engines and saw the wing dip. No other game at the time offered such realism, I was hooked. But even with that realism, it was an exciting game to play. Bases were close together, dog fights were many and Tank Town was a place I could spend hours having fun (and subscribers in a one-sector area easily outnumbered all those in the entire game today). I belong to a bomber squad. When I wanted to climb to altitude, I could start a few bases back - no one stopped me - but no one also prevented me from flying half a sector to try out an A6M2 without worrying that I was wasting my time because I'd soon get lit up like a candle. I got good, I had a lot of fun, and I told people they had to try this game.
Once I learned what I was doing, I spent a couple of months trying to boost my ranking, flying smart and taking every advantage. It was fun for a while, but then life got complicated and I just wanted simple, easy to access fun.
Yet, somehow, the game decided that furballs weren't what was wanted and maps increasingly became spread out. Maybe you didn't design the maps, but you allowed maps with widely spaced bases to dominate the game and things became boring for a majority of players. I would imagine HTC could create its own maps, right?
As maps became boring Numbers shrank. I eventually decided that playing AH was pretty equivalent to my rush-hour commute - long periods of boredom punctuated by short periods of excitement. The monthly tolls were also about the same.
You apparently based your decisions on a small cadre of players who had hours to spend in arenas (and spouting off on forums about the need to contain "the horde") instead of considering what would appeal to folks who had a limited time or interest in the game but could develop into regulars. Newbies, and folks who work and don't have all day to spend flying to find some excitement, want the option of jumping online, getting a jolt of adrenaline and enjoying themselves. That has increasingly become "not the AH way." I'd say prove me wrong, but the multiple forum posts about this would lead me to believe you are fooling yourself. That says a lot about HTC's priorities for the game and the players it wishes to retain vs the players it wishes to attract. So it's no surprise finding new players is difficult.
Folks are going to say "How do you know, you've never developed a game." But I was here when numbers were high and you had to divide arenas due to numbers exceeding server capacity. I've seen what's happened. Something went wrong somewhere.
Another example of a rule that discourages players is your insistence to clinging to ENY. That thing has never, ever, ever encouraged players to stick with Aces High or to even change countries. I get what you are trying to do, but would point out that the implementation of ENY rules came at what was roughly the highpoint for AH online participation (note I don't say subscribers. I imagine it took a while for old die-hards like me to finally decide to throw in the towel.) It was all downhill from there. ENY doesn't work. I'd love to see you provide stats that prove me wrong - X number or percentage of players change countries when ENY kicks -stuff that you undoubtedly have access to - but to the best of my knowledge you have never shown us that. I suspect that's because you value your vision for ENY more than you value the folks leaving the game because of it. Something with ENY isn't working. If you want to attract new players, admit it and move on.
If you want an example of how silly ENY is, take a look at my recent experience. I dropped AH when I started playing other, high-fidelity offline games that let me Russian into fights with my computer quickly. I then moved to their free online arenas. It was fun, but (I have to admit) a constant go up, get shot down, go up again, also gets boring. This is where AH can find its niche, if you really want to appeal to both sides of the equation. Having kept in touch with squadmates, I wanted to reconnect and earlier this month signed up for a new account. I was immediately thrown into an online arena as a Bish. I tried to get up to defend a base being pounded, but couldn't get a plane built before 1941. As an old AH pro, I realized that ENY rules had kicked in, although I wondered why the server dumped me into the most populated country on the map. If I'd been a newbie, I would have been wondering why I could only fly a P-40 while P-51s were vulching me with abandon. I would have left and never come back.
HiTech, the fact you asked me to identify rules that discourage players makes me think you really don't care. This is all stuff that's been discussed ad infinitum since at least 2010. Nothing, whatsoever, has changed. Yet you act like "What? There's a problem?" Seriously? As I said earlier, I imagine you are a smart guy, so please imagine we are smart, too. You might know how you'd like your game to be played. That's fine. People know how they want to play a game. If they are forced into playing a way they don't want to play, they leave. That's what's been happening for what, 10 years now? (If you have another explanation for the precipitous decline in subscribers, please share). If you want the two visions to coincide, you need to be willing to work to make those visions coincide for both the folks who still work for your company and the long-time players who have invested a lot of time and interest into making AH succeed.
Doing the math, I imagine you are getting close to retirement and are hoping to just hold onto the subscribers you have to keep things going until you decide to pull the plug or sell. More power to you. I can't blame you. But you asked, so I let you know what I thought. In my business, as I imagine in yours, the saying "Numbers tell the story" applies. When circulation declined, we adapted and actually clawed back subscribers. For AH, the numbers tell me you are still at a point where you are comfortable and figure you can hold on as long as necessary and so are unwilling to rethink anything. I get it but I figured I'd take 15 minutes or so to answer your question. In my business, we also say electronic ink costs nothing. You asked, so I replied.
