The lack of team balancing doesn't?
That is the problem .... it does not balance, it may make a few people like me log off, and consider canceling their subscription, but honestly most people just fly the next plane in the list they can, and the other side(s) still get mowed over, you just get mowed over by slightly older aircraft.
So even with NMY on you are going to have balance issues because it does not balance the sides it simply cuts off some planes.
I do not agree with the simple turning off NMY as a solution. I think it was deliberately self-defeating, HT even prophetically stated as much. But I honestly would take NMY off and out of the game than use it the way it has historically been implemented.
Low numbers can and often does make the problems with NMY even worse.
I think NMY can only work if people can change sides and then change back as faction populations normalize or overcompensate.
Some other ideas have been to remove NMY when numbers are at certain low numbers.
To remove tower nappers from the NMY equation (so they don’t count) – some claim this was already true before nmy was turned off.
I think someone came up with the idea to apply NMY to GVs Planes and Bombers separately. This one is interesting because I have gotten up late at night with NMY so bad all the corsairs were locked out, yet we only had a couple guys flying and they were outnumbered in the air 3 to 1. However, we had some 10 to 20 players on the ground spawn camping in Ground Vehicles one poor rook and about another dozen knights sleeping in the tower or playing with their sheep.
I think I’m one of the few and the loudest champions of leaving NMY on and allowing fast country change backs. Such as allowing you to change from bishop to knight and then 15 to 30 minutes later able to change back.
The only counter to it is that it would make spying easier and more of a problem. That may have been true back in AH1 and the early days of AH2 but now with social media and streaming that point has become mute as you absolutely cannot control spying in any way shape or form. Toss in shade accounts stream peaking/sniping and ya spying is no longer a controllable issue.
The benefits of ‘fast country change backs’ is that encourages people to change countries without the fear they can’t change back when their squad mates or a bestie shows up on their old country or they can’t change to another country when their new country becomes overcrowded due to a knee jerk reaction from the players.
Sometimes NMY can follow you when you change countries. It’s actually rare but it can and does happen.
Another benefit is improving Comradery and Community over the game as a whole, and this is a real big one. Rapid country changes with NMY allows and encourage players to fly/drive with other pilots and drivers that they normally would not. It encourages people to get to know the other guy. People start working with people that they normally would not. Pretty soon it becomes about the game and fun not some silly loyalty to a chess piece. I’m willing to bet 200 would be much less of toxic cesspool. I actually came back from FSO once and after a few hours of play I noticed how non-toxic the game was and how great people where to each other …. Then I released I forgot I ‘detuned’ channel 200 in FSO :/ …. Ya the game is so much better and less stressful when you ‘detune’ 200 in the MA. That is kind of sad and another thing that drives player away specially newbies.
We need newbies even squeakers if this game is going to last up until they pull the cord on Hitech’s life support … that’s plugged into the servers UPS.
I remember when we had two or three 500 player MA’s and one was always full. Now we are lucky to see 200 at prime time in an MA that supports 1000. We are losing players. We are losing players to other games, we are losing players to frustration, and sadly we are losing players to the ravages of time. This game has been around since 1999 and this community has been around since at least 1987 and some of us where old when it started while some of us were not even a twinkle in daddy’s eye.
We are not picking up enough new players to replace the ones we are losing and to make matters even worse we have people leaving due to low numbers. If I’m not mistaken we had a slight active player spike when NMY was turned off.
I think one of my squad mates said it best “Aces High is a Niche game that has a steep learning curve that isn't really accessible to the newb and most of the Xbox generation. It lacks both the pretty factor and accessibility of WarThunder as well as the pretty factor complexity and fidelity of DCS and IL2. Unfortunately Aces high is not catching the players as they move between the accessibility of WarThunder and the fidelity of DCS and IL2 due to pretty factor.” That’s not word for word exact but that’s what he said.
Unless someone has a million dollar add campaign in their pocket and or a new high end pretty graphics engine in their pocket that can run well on older hardware …. We need to sell this game. We need to get our family and friends involved. Maybe name drop on forums at work on social media. Players need to stream and tell their friends and family about their streams. We need to draw old players back.
What this game really has in spades is its community and the community's relationship with the games developer and it's a true mass multiplayer game that can handle 1000 player in a single arena .... Unfortunately we only have about 50 to 200 players in the MA at any given time. The days of seeing 500+ in the MA are pretty much gone and I don't see them coming back any time soon.
Here I am preaching from on high about how we must save our game and community (Can I get hello Jaffar!?!) and yet … Good God! I find NMY more frustrating than getting my corn dog stuck in the mustard jar! It really makes me want to quit.
I preach to my kids when they go off on the ps4 and start screaming at the TV and toss one of my very expensive controllers around the room “STOP! If the game frustrates you that much play something else and if it is really that bad uninstall it and trade it in. Games are meant to be fun!”
I am NOT A DARKSOULS PLAYER! NMY the way it was will me make rage quit one to many times cancel my account and delete the game. As some here said “I now have 2 other games that take up most of my free time.” I have more than that. Except for some weird reason it does matter to me … probably due to nostalgia. I’ve been here since the AOL Airwarrior days. My squad has been here since at least 1987.
I would highly recommend people come up with a reasonable solution to the NMY problem. NMY on as it was and NMY off as it is now just is not working. Once you have your solution most people can agree with, someone should take it to HiTech, probably in an email.
If Nmy comes back the way it was and I’ll probably quit. I cannot speak for any one else. If nmy stays the way it is it could drive enough people away the game loses its fun for us and profit (If any) for Hitech. Basically an MMO collapse. There may come a time Hitech has to pull the plug and go work some crap job at a nasty company like EA or Ubisoft. Come on! really?!? We Can’t lose Hitech to EA!
Any way Maybe it’s just me Damned if I Do Damned if I don’t and No fun neither and that just isn’t who I am, I miss the fun.
I’m bingo out and RTB! Damn you Dolby I didn't mean to write a book!
