throwing my 2 cents in. I played Warbirds some and DOA during beta. Somthing that really anoyed me in both was that you get some who seem to have guided bullets and Kevlar armor. I would pound them and they would fly right on by, then before I could get the plane turned around they would be on my 6 and with just a couple pings, I'd be dead. Another problem, more noticed in Warbirds and Aces High, then DOA was bouncy planes. The plane seem steady while flying and even coming up on any enemy. But just as the target gets in gun range and I fire, my plane starts bobing up and down making it very hard stay on target. I never have been able to figure that one out.
When Aces High started beta, I tried it a few times, but it didn't take long before I was again getting shot down every time shortly after take off. It seemed my plane was made of papper and I was fireing blanks. The target just about fills my screen, It looks like most of the shots are hitting, and I can't even get smoke out of them. They send a few tracers over and I'm back at the tower. I gave up on th egame because I don't find that fun.
When the game was about to go live, I decided to give it another try. But I could not get it to play on a computer behind Nat32 and after several unanswered request for the port numbers that need to be opened beyond what I all ready had open for another game, I again gave up.
Now the tanks have been added and I'm back trying again. Looks like some changes where made to the network code because now it will at least get through on TCP with the ports I have opened. I still need to open some UDP ports and asked in game, but no one seemed to know.
Now I have another problem though. After a random amount of time, I loose my joystick requiring a reboot to get it back. Somthing is stomping on the drivers as once it's gone, windows won't reconize it even manually added. It just says not connected. Again I made several post about it and as of last night, the only responce was 1 other player who as seen this a few times. I havn't checked yet today to see if my lastest info got a responce.
As for the tanks, they are more fun then the planes in that I have a much better chance in them. Even got a few kills, both against aircraft and another tank. As for the speeds, first few times I went flying down a hill, I kept expecting the engine to blow which they never did. But there is a risk with going too fast. If you turn just a little bit, you go for a tumble. I have rolled several panz and M16's and even cart wheeled an M16 offline.
Two things I think could use changing here. First, engines should do a little better job at holding speed back. If you down shift, they do some what, but not that much. Second, over reving should do damage to the engines. They model this in the Nascar games.
In general, I would like to see the time in unit after crash increased. When you crash a plane, you are back at the tower the second you hit. When you roll a truck or tank, you are back at tower before it is upside down. People do servive rolls a lot better then that and rolls don't distroy tanks, though they make take damage if in fast hard rolls. If the crash or roll is bad enough to kill, then it should still not kick you back to tower at least until the unit has stoped and preferably, not auto send you back at all. Simply give a message that your are dead and you have to select tower from the clip board.
This last point is sure to ruffle a lot of feathers, and that is the cost. Yes I know it requires a lot of man hours, but all good games do be they offline or online games. And yes I know there is cost in equipment for the servers and internet connections. But at $30/month, that's about like buying the game over again every month. I buy 1-2 games a year at most and I play them a lot longer then 1 month. Some of us are not made of money. With boxed games, they sell the game once and that's it. They won't get any more from that person for that game. They go back, start over, spend many more man hours on a new game and the cycle continues. Unlike offline games, a major part of what makes this or any online game is the number of people in the game at any given time. And the fewer who can afford to play, the fewer players you have keeping the game from being a ghost town which only servers to drive the remaining players away. Take a lesson from Quicken and Peach Tree. Peach Tree was on top for accounting software back when they all charged hundreds of dollars, including Quicken. But Quicken realized it would be better to make their money over a larger customer base then try to get it out of a rich few and so they droped their price to somthing like $30 and nearly put Peach Tree under, until they figured out what happened and lowered their price. But they never recovered the market that Quicken gained. Now when ever you bring up the idea of lowering your price to make more money, the companies quickly jump up and down and say, we can't do that and still make money. We'll go under! Will, Quicken dosen't seem to be hirting too much right now. They are the number 1 home/small company software company setting the standars for the rest.
