player ethos in the bucket

[toasted]

I'll suggest going back to the very first post in this thread and give it some more thought. 

protip: It's only indirectly related to ENY

  That seems dangerously close to having to do critical thinking on a saturday. maybe spoon feed it to me like im 5.

[Shane]

I'm not understanding that either, Shane,

One thing that I'm confused about is why the Inflight, AFK and Waiting numbers don't add up to the totals logged in and the percentage "non AFK"

Go re-read my first post.  Day after day of this for the past 4 years I've been back.  (I think I have actually shamed a few players from leaving the morning bish swarm, so there's at least that.) 

The evenings are less grindingly redundant in that numerical imbalances and double teamings are more short lived, fluid and can still be addressed in fun ways because there are still sufficient numbers at play.


I had my own questions about that "waiting" category, but it's not relevant to the underlying theme of ethos.

[-gg-]

Shane, it's not always an entire country working together. In your OP example you talk about "Knits" attacking 80"  - and it's just one bomber going there. That's not "Knits" attacking 80, that's one guy.

Lots of times I hear "Bish this..... Rooks always do this...." talk as if they all act as a team. Mostly they don't. Squads don't even always act as a team.

Anyway, who cares?

[toasted]

Go re-read my first post.  Day after day of this for the past 4 years I've been back.  (I think I have actually shamed a few players from leaving the morning bish swarm, so there's at least that.) 

The evenings are less grindingly redundant in that numerical imbalances and double teamings are more short lived, fluid and can still be addressed in fun ways because there are still sufficient numbers at play.


I had my own questions about that "waiting" category, but it's not relevant to the underlying theme of ethos.

I dunno, im slow today. I agree players should police themselves, but as long as your not going to mandate auto side balancing, there isnt much you can do about actual numbers. People are animals and behave in pretty predictable ways most of the time. Ideally people would see how lopsided it was and even themselves out, but for various reasons that just will not happen. Especially in this game where everyone is absolutely set in thier ways of how its always been.

[The Fugitive]

The imbalance in numbers.... to me anyway.... are those sitting in the tower that have NOT tripped the 5 minute timer and so are still counted towards the ENY calc.

Im with toasted, "Bish are winning, bish have a ton of guys in flight, bish have eny". Yes the Bish are a horde and number wise its not fair. But short of forcing "side balancing" it rarely is balanced.

Im part of the "Sic Puppies" , one of those horrible Bish squads that bring a thousand guys to take a base. Why? we enjoy flying together. Even if we are hitting undefended bases we have fun. The game side is just fodder for all the comments on squad channel. Im sure there are many others in the game that do the same thing so your never going to see balanced fights. To make the game side more challenging Id like us to split or force to take two bases at a time, but then the radio chatter get confusing as you dont know whos where, and splitting the guys to two channels takes half the fun away from the comments and the ribbing.

If we had two, three time the players we have today there would be more fights at different fronts and you could find the fight you want to play in, but with these numbers its not going to happen often.

[Shane]

  That seems dangerously close to having to do critical thinking on a saturday. maybe spoon feed it to me like im 5.

Avert your eyes, below will be more words.

Two days apart, both around 8-9am cst, different maps.  Look at base counts. Why are knits hitting rooks instead of trying to take some of their bases back to prevent the win?

[Shane]

Shane, it's not always an entire country working together. In your OP example you talk about "Knits" attacking 80"  - and it's just one bomber going there. That's not "Knits" attacking 80, that's one guy.

Lots of times I hear "Bish this..... Rooks always do this...." talk as if they all act as a team. Mostly they don't. Squads don't even always act as a team.

Anyway, who cares?

Sigh, I can't expand the map big enough to show, but there was zero bish/knit activity. If you actually look at that image, you will see TWO plane dar blocks and a gv dar near the base. That's 3 of 4 and that 4th is very much within one of those dar blocks because nothing was happening on the knit/bish front.  I was there. I am there. Everyday.

I did display that on another screenshot tho... right here in this thread.

The mental gymnastics some of you are engaging in...   

[toasted]

Part of the issue is also the maps, Sometimes you just want the map over with so your just trying to hasten one sides win.
Once your getting spanked and double teamed, sometimes a reset just looks like a better option.

the maps really do us no favors here, they are pretty much all geared to 1k players.

And you really cant break up the squads who come in like the pups and just break the equation.
(nor would you really want to i dont think)

You could however fix some of this with a better side switching option...
1. incentivize side switching when numbers are really bad, offer 50 perk points to swap

2. you may expand this to have it automatically move the player back to thier prefered team as more players log on and it evens out.
3. or have a time option, like switch for 30 min for x perks switch for an hour ect..
there are probably a bunch of ideas that could be used to make players think switching was a good idea.

better to try and incentivize people to do the right thing than force them to.

[-gg-]

I'm not trying to be obtuse. I just don't really care. When I play, I have zero concern for who's winning the map or what country is attacking another.

I look at your OP and I pointed out that one guy in is attacking your base. That's what I see and I don't see any issue.

Sometimes the big hoard and fight is too far away for me (Knits) and I'll just go somewhere to try to start a fight with anyone. I don't typically want to fly more than 1 sector and I don't want to fly by myself into a giant hoard with two other counties involved - because no matter how you want to think of it, no two countries ever fully cooperate and try to attack the larger side.

I don't get bothered in the least by what you get bothered by. I just don't care. I only care about finding something to do for an hour or two.

[-gg-]

Part of the issue is also the maps, Sometimes you just want the map over with so your just trying to hasten one sides win.
Once your getting spanked and double teamed, sometimes a reset just looks like a better option.

the maps really do us no favors here, they are pretty much all geared to 1k players.

And you really cant break up the squads who come in like the pups and just break the equation.
(nor would you really want to i dont think)

You could however fix some of this with a better side switching option...
1. incentivize side switching when numbers are really bad, offer 50 perk points to swap

2. you may expand this to have it automatically move the player back to thier prefered team as more players log on and it evens out.
3. or have a time option, like switch for 30 min for x perks switch for an hour ect..
there are probably a bunch of ideas that could be used to make players think switching was a good idea.

better to try and incentivize people to do the right thing than force them to.

Good ideas

I like the incentive options over the coercion/penalty any day.  I don't care what is given away to anyone else.

[toasted]

I only care about finding something to do for an hour or two.

That's the other thing, only like 50% of players are trying to win the war. the other 50% are just looking for a fight. Nothing wrong with this at all.

and most players prefer having someone to fight with as well as against. I'm safer in a group of friendly planes, i may not want to switch sides to be getting gang banged 5-1.

just another reason you will never be able to count on player ethos to even this out. if you want to even it out some system will have to be put in place to incentives or force it. otherwise no one will swap because its not in their best interest. and that's really animal rule number 1 isn't it.

[Spikes]

Personally, my only incentive needed to switch is just the ability to switch again within a reasonable time. It was mentioned somewhere and I like the idea, to always be able to move to the low # side. Or even if trying to go to another low # side cuts the timer to an hour.

[CptTrips]

Part of the issue is also the maps, Sometimes you just want the map over with so your just trying to hasten one sides win.

What would you think if there was a system to offer the losing sides, terms of surrender?
Anyone could initiate the vote. Only the currently losing sides could vote, but if the majority of those agree, there is an immediate surrender, the winning side wins and the map rotates.
Rather than a slow painful slog on a map nobody likes.

I've played games where you could vote on next map. Similar idea.  Maybe if surrender is voted for, another vote lets the losers vote for the next map.

Not promoting that.  Just curious.

[toasted]

Personally, my only incentive needed to switch is just the ability to switch again within a reasonable time. It was mentioned somewhere and I like the idea, to always be able to move to the low # side. Or even if trying to go to another low # side cuts the timer to an hour.

Yea, honestly id also switch from time to time if i could go back in an hour or so. Really it kind of feels like your penalized if you switch sides currently.
I don't want to just be autoswitched though. A pop up saying things were off balance and asking for a switch for an hour would be cool i think. bonus if it includes a few perk points to get more people to do it.

I don't think we need to throw the current systems away, i do think we could maybe tweak them a bit.

[toasted]

What would you think if there was a system to offer the losing sides, terms of surrender?
Anyone could initiate the vote. Only the currently losing sides could vote, but if the majority of those agree, there is an immediate surrender, the winning side wins and the map rotates.
Rather than a slow painful slog on a map nobody likes.

I've played games where you could vote on next map. Similar idea.  Maybe if surrender is voted for, another vote lets the losers vote for the next map.

Not promoting that.  Just curious.

i like this in theory. though i might have the second place team also get some (but not a full) vote i think.