How much and How many

[Wiley]

I'm sorry.  I know that was just humor, but that argument, which is often trotted out, drives me crazy.

It is essentially like saying:

"If everyone would just go back to driving horse buggies, there there would be a better market for buggy whips.  "

It's both true and pointless. Those who had been horse buggy customers have either died of old age or moved on to buying automobiles.
What's left now is a handful of Amish.  Those remaining Amish are still loyal and appreciate the quality of the remaining world-class 
buggy whip manufacturer, but the market trajectory is not going to change by force of wishful thinking.  Especially if the criteria is that no material changes to the current game can be considered.  If you send the same parameters to a function, you get the same return value.

On the positive side, I suspect the rate of population decline is shallowing. Not because the market is changing, but because most who are likely to have left, already have.  Those who are remaining probably represents a fairly durable population.  They have pretty much decided to stay until they take a dirt nap, or HT unplugs the server.  But it still seems to be an evaporation rate of about 20 players a year, at least since 2018.  But I defer to Lusche.

If WB or WWIIOnline would finally give up the ghost, AH might get one last handful of refugees.  But I wouldn't expect more than a 20 player bump.

Everything is impermeant.  Enjoy it while it lasts.

$0.02.

The thing that boggled me was when HT mentioned that over a few months 40k people passed through the MA after it went on Steam, and I didn't notice an appreciable bump in numbers when I'd log in at prime time.  I always figured before that a few hundred more people would create a noticeable difference.  While the majority of that was likely the sub-30 second and log people, it was just an eye opener about how many people it would take to make a difference in the arena numbers at any given moment.

Wiley.

[CptTrips]

The thing that boggled me was when HT mentioned that over a few months 40k people passed through the MA after it went on Steam, and I didn't notice an appreciable bump in numbers when I'd log in at prime time.

Hmmm.  I know a boat load downloaded the game from Steam.  I don't remember how many he said actually went into the MA.  But many of those that did, probably just sat on the runway for a bit, couldn't figure out what to do and exited and uninstalled. 

Would canned tutorials help?  Maybe.  Should it prevent them from entering the MA until they are completed? Maybe.  That may also cause it's own problems to lock the MA behind a tutorial wall.  But maybe it is the better trade-off. 

I think the average time online for those Steam players according to HT was something like less than 10 min.  A lot could have come and gone in an evening without you ever noticing  them, as most apparently never got wheels up.

Yeah, I know.  Those kids on Steam are nothing but a bunch of twitch kiddies.  They aren't serious flight simmers.  Yadda Yadda Yadda.  Throw in some Millennial/Avocado Toast slurs...  

[DmonSlyr]

Sadly the attendance will only get worse over the next year. It's kinda like a locked door being shut from the outside. And this door is almost shut. Hi-tech threw the key in the trash years ago. I will continue to enjoy whats left until there is nobody left.

That's not true at all. The #s will pick up going into winter. The summer typically has lower #s in general. Hitech has not thrown away the key. Thats a false statement. He has done quite a bit of work. IMO, hitech just needs a bigger team and a bigger marketing apparatus at that. Like I said before, one commercial goes a long way. Sometimes you gotta invest before you can reap the reward. Heck. Even send out a newsletter email to old players. Who gives a rip if someone calls it spam. They can delete it. It might encourage someone or squads to come back to the game.

I think what Hitech needs to do is just go back to the basics. One MA arena. One simple DA arena. One Team death match small map arena (Free to play), the TA,  and the special events, all on one clip board that is east to follow - no tabs.

I think going back to a simpler set up would help a lot. A once a year newsletter to emails would help, a commercial would help, fixing some plane, tank, bomber ENYs, and remove old maps and replace with new, would do a lot to help. Maybe even going back to the old radar, but making radar towers harder to destroy, which was always the idea I had.

Other than that, I think we will be back into the 150 players a month range by September and there is still a good amount of fun and fights to be had most of the time.

[DmonSlyr]

Hmmm.  I know a boat load downloaded the game from Steam.  I don't remember how many he said actually went into the MA.  But many of those that did, probably just sat on the runway for a bit, couldn't figure out what to do and exited and uninstalled. 

Would canned tutorials help?  Maybe.  Should it prevent them from entering the MA until they are completed? Maybe.  That may also cause it's own problems to lock the MA behind a tutorial wall.  But maybe it is the better trade-off. 

I think the average time online for those Steam players according to HT was something like less than 10 min.  A lot could have come and gone in an evening without you ever noticing  them, as most apparently never got wheels up.

Yeah, I know.  Those kids on Steam are nothing but a bunch of twitch kiddies.  They aren't serious flight simmers.  Yadda Yadda Yadda.  Throw in some Millennial/Avocado Toast slurs...

The training videos that were made were very helpful. Most of us wouldn't see them until you completely re-download the game. I was quite surprised to see the videos and thought they did a pretty decent job.

[Lusche]

I think the average time online for those Steam players according to HT was something like less than 10 min.

I recently started up a new steam installation without joystick plugged in and I can say that I would not have lasted any longer than that if I had not been playing AH before.

[Wiley]

Hmmm.  I know a boat load downloaded the game from Steam.  I don't remember how many he said actually went into the MA.  But many of those that did, probably just sat on the runway for a bit, couldn't figure out what to do and exited and uninstalled. 

Ha!  Found it.

Don't mean to jump on ya but on this rare occasion I want to point out how mistaken almost all people on this board are about the dynamics of AH.

In the last 100 days aprox 40,000 people have installed Aces High, 20,000 new people have created accounts and entered an arena. Of the people entering the arena 65% are gone and do never reenter by the 10 minute mark of being in the arena. 75% are gone after 30 Minutes.

...

HiTech

15% had joysticks when they came in, ~1% conversion rate overall.  So by that, Steam caused 200 subs at the time and the change was undetectable looking at numbers in the arena at any given time.

Maybe.  Should it prevent them from entering the MA until they are completed? Maybe.  That may also cause it's own problems to lock the MA behind a tutorial wall.  But maybe it is the better trade-off. 

I would love to see real stats on what the majority prefer on stuff like that.  It would seem to me it might be beneficial as long as it was kept super short, like no more than 3 minutes or so to go through it smoothly.

Yeah, I know.  Those kids on Steam are nothing but a bunch of twitch kiddies.  They aren't serious flight simmers.  Yadda Yadda Yadda.  Throw in some Millennial/Avocado Toast slurs...

Heh, I don't see it like that at all.  If you look at a lot of the new guys that come in and get good, their gunnery is usually terrifying IMO due to people generally being more familiar with shooting stuff in games these days.

For me the problem is when it's good, I actually like the style of gameplay here versus the stuff that's more popular.  Not many people do.  I don't see anything that would indicate that changing in the future, so here we are.

Wiley.

[LCADolby]

The training videos that were made were very helpful. Most of us wouldn't see them until you completely re-download the game. I was quite surprised to see the videos and thought they did a pretty decent job.

 

[DmonSlyr]

Hell, that's more than most games these days.

Of course, it's tough to understand effectiveness when you already know how the game works.