Hitech...How about Weighting Perks Based on Population?

[Dingy]

HT,

How about this for an idea?  Adding another modifier to perkies based on country population?  Give the overwhelmed countries a slightly higher number of perkies to keep them online and flying against overwhelming numbers?

It doesnt have to be anything major, just something to give players an incentive to continue flying while being ganged from both sides.  Theres plenty of new pilots who might be swayed to switch sides to the outmatched side just to get the bonus perks and this would do wonders to try to even out the sides.

The formula doesnt need to be difficult...when perks are calculated, divide the number of perkies by the ratio of currently held bases by the initial number of bases when the map is first loaded.  So, the formula would work like this:

Lets say some players country starts the war with 30 bases.  They have been doing well and are close to resetting the Nits and now have 50 bases.  This player lands his plane which would normally get him 5 perkies but due to this new formula he would get a bit less than 5 due to the numbers (somewhere around 4.2 perkies with the formula).   This would be a weighting factor to simulate how much easier it is to get a kill when you have the enemy outnumbered.

Conversely, another player who lands his plane with a base 5 perkies who also happens to be outnumbered by the other two countries, would get MORE than 5 perkies since it would theoretilcally be HARDER to land those kills when the enemy outnumbers ya.

Another idea would be to base the weighting factor on ratio of your country's pilots to the total in the arena.  If your country's population makes up a third of the arena population, there is no positive or negative effect on your final number of perkies.  If your country's population is more than a third of the total arena population, your final perk tally is just a bit less than normal.  Likewise, if your countries population is LESS than a third of the total arena population, you get MORE perkies than you would otherwise.  

The whole idea behind this is to give the outnumbered pilots some incentive to staying online and flying for their countries rather than switching sides just as it is to give other pilots an incentive to possibly switch sides to the underwhelmed country if they fly strictly for the perkies.

-Ding

[Citabria]

side balance can change by the minute though so it wouldnt have much effect for more than a small time


Ive seen bish have 50 player advantage go to 20 player disadvantage in under 10 minutes

[Nefarious]

Perk points are earned for each country.

Fore example=

Nefari has x.xx points for bishops.
Nefari has x.xx points for Knights.
Nefari has x.xx points for Rooks.


This would encourage players to become "TEAM PLAYERS"

[mrsid2]

Originally posted by Citabria
side balance can change by the minute though so it wouldnt have much effect for more than a small time


Ive seen bish have 50 player advantage go to 20 player disadvantage in under 10 minutes

OTOH I have seen knight have 50% advantage and continue doing so for weeks, each time when I logged on. Before knits it was bish.. Lately numbers have been 2xbish 3xknits 1xrooks, and it's not 10 minutes its for the whole 4-5 hours per night that I can spend online. On those nights that I stay awake untill 3-4 a.m. the situation changes around 2 a.m. so that bishops get banged by rooks and nits. Lately as you can see the sides have balanced some, still the general idea can be seen from the pic below.

The problem is there..

[mrsid2]

One hour later:

[MANDOBLE]

Dingy, basically agree with you but, why perk points? Or why only  perk points? Actually perks are of little usage, perhaps normal points would be a better reward.

Being outnumbered means one thing: you have much more chances of being killed than killing others and getting perks. During the last months (year?) rookland was the preferred perk factory for bish and knights.

A good rule:
Every hour online (and outside the tower) in a country outnumbered by more than 20% by any other country means 50 free perks and 500 normal points per every category. Four hours flying in a massively outnumbered country (even if you are killed over'n over without a single kill) means a free 262 ride

This way people will keep online and "somewhat" happy flying for outnumbered and gambanged countries (that is, rookland).

[eskimo2]

This is a good idea.
Mandoble, yours is also a good idea, except what's to prevent somone from ditching a fighter in the middle of nowhere, then going to bed?  When they wake up, they get 2 free jets!

eskimo

[Dingy]

Cit,

I understand your point but for the last 3 months that I've been back in AH, the Rooks are considerably less populated than the Knights and Bish during Eastern US prime time.  It could very well be that Rooks outnumber the other countries during other parts of the day but the beauty of this idea is that the formula constantly takes changing populations into account.   While your country is underpopulated, you get a perk bonus to reflect the relative added difficulty of finding kills and when your country is overpopulated, your perks are reduced slightly to take into account the easier ability you have of finding kills.

If the arena populations for each country really do fluctuate from low to high numbers, then this formula wont have much of an effect on your final perk numbers since the law of averages will come into play.  Some days you have higher perk bonuses, sometimes you have lower perk bonuses.  BUT....

If the arena imbalances during specific playing hours really are what many have mentioned in other posts, this may have the ability to level the playing field.  Perhaps some players will migrate from the more populated countries to take advantage of the bonus or to reduce their penalty.   If not, then why not give the underpopulated country a few extra perkies so they can afford the better planes to better fight overwhelming numbers?

I just dont see where this idea has a negative point.

With regards to Nefarious, I dont think teamwork is really the problem we're trying to address.  Numbers imbalances are the problem here and having separate perk points for each country wouldnt do much to solve this problem.

Im just trying to come up with some ideas here cause I can understand Mipoikel's and MrSid's frustration.  As a Rook, Im going thru it also

-Ding

[Dingy]

Originally posted by MANDOBLE
A good rule:
Every hour online (and outside the tower) in a country outnumbered by more than 20% by any other country means 50 free perks and 500 normal points per every category. Four hours flying in a massively outnumbered country (even if you are killed over'n over without a single kill) means a free 262 ride

This way people will keep online and "somewhat" happy flying for outnumbered and gambanged countries (that is, rookland).

The only problem I see with this is what Eskimo has already outlined.  Whats to keep someone from ditching a plane well out of the way of enemy fiters so he can accumulate either perks or points.  

The idea behind my system is that the perk bonus or penalty reflects the changing difficulty of getting kills in the arena based on populations and requires someone to actively fly to get the bonus.

-Ding

[Lephturn]

This has been suggested in the past Dingy, and it's still a great idea.  Needs to happen IMO.

[Dingy]

Originally posted by Lephturn
This has been suggested in the past Dingy, and it's still a great idea.  Needs to happen IMO.

Yeak, I know it has Lephturn  I made the original suggestion!  Since it didnt happen then I just thought I might resuggest it.

[Zippatuh]

The inherent problem with this is assuming that the player that switches sides is fighting for perk points.  I don’t believe that is the case.  The player that switches sides during an imminent reset is switching for the win.  Maybe the 20 perks associated with it, but for the most part I would think it is to be part of a dominant victory.  The whole “no one likes to loose” theory.

Friday evening the Knights where the meal of choice.  I was online for a little over two hours.  By the time I left we only had two bases left and there were still somewhere between 100-120 flyers on the Knights side.  I myself had no problems keeping a positive k/d ratio and in the process took up a Tempest for the hell of it.  Although there were a few generals trying to bark, “more to this side, more to that side” as whole I think we put up a hell of a fight.  I’m sure some changed sides but I think quite a few did not.  I don’t believe the ones that switched sides would have stayed due to any type of perk point change.

I think it comes down to wanting to be on the winning side rather than loosing.  Perks won’t change that.

Zippatuh

[Dingy]

Originally posted by Zippatuh
I think it comes down to wanting to be on the winning side rather than loosing.  Perks won’t change that.

Zippatuh

I think you are missing the point.  This isnt going to change gangbanging nor is it designed to.  There will always be one side that gets attacked by the two others.

This whole idea was thought up to address NUMBERS imbalances.  Even though the Nits were getting hit by both sides, their numbers were still close to being a third of the arena.  This ISNT the case with the Rooks.

-Ding

[Zippatuh]

Isn’t it that the argument for balancing numbers is a fall out argument to being gang banged?  Are you not saying that if the numbers were balanced there wouldn’t be as much ganging up on one country?

It seems to me that the country with the lowest numbers is usually the one that is being ganged up on.  So your solution to counter the imbalance in numbers is actually a solution for ganging.

Most of the new players have little to no idea what the perk system is and I imagine many do not really care.  I also think that many of the veteran players, although they know what it is, do not really care either.  My point is that regardless of how you provide perks compared to numbers it will not have the affect that you believe it will.

This of course is just my opinion Ding, I’m not discounting the idea, I just don’t believe it will work.

Zippatuh

[Animal]

I think this is a great idea...