Bish #s in MA

[Innominate]

Hmm, What about giving perk bonuses to outnumbered teams?
Or, allow only three team switches per month, maybe even two..

A lot of the numbers problem has to do with the fact that winning teams tend to have more players staying online, while losing teams have more players logging off.  Unfortunatly people are constantly switching to the winning team.  What could HTC do to promote a sort of in-game patriotism, and try and get people to stay with a team?

[pbirmingham]

Originally posted by Elysian
 Someone has too lose though, so maybe I should just grin and bear it.

I do stand by my point of a 3 country system being flawed when one country outnumbers both the others.

I don't say this here often, because I really dig the game and don't want to come across as telling the folks at HTC what to do with this marvelous thing they've created. I'm going to say it this once, though:

The biggest gameplay flaw is not the three-country system, which works fine.  The biggest flaw is  the imposition of structure through making the game winnable.   Someone only has to lose because someone has to win -- they are inextricably linked.

That's just my opinion, though.  I didn't play Warbirds much, but I understand that the gameplay was similar in that respect ("war" won by grabbing territory.)  Obviously, it's a successful formula, and I can't argue with that.

[Leslie]

Elysian has made a valid point, however, as a Rook I must agree with Mipoikel also.  Rooks don't have many organized missions running in the editor.  A while back Zigrat was the Rook mission master.  This was when the Assassins were prominent in the MA.

Lately, I've seen only a few of these organized missions being run by the Rooks using the editor...and when they run, they are usually successful.  I believe this is the key to success on large scale base attacks.

Though numbers fit into the equation, there are players on all sides who do just play for fun and aren't interested in winning the war.  That's their call, imo.

About the maps:

The maps are set up with two hostile borders to deal with.  This is why strategy is important in winning.  If we only had two sides with one border, I think strategy would pretty much go out the window, unless it would be possible to win the war by having a country achieve a certain number of kills to win, OR have it like the CT where maps rotate every week.  The side with the most kills wins.  Then the map rotates to a new one.

Just a couple thoughts.  But I'm thinking there has to be a solution where everyone is satisfied with what it takes to win, numbers notwithstanding.

Bishops
Knights
Rooks


Les

[MrRiplEy[H]]

I wonder at what time these bishops play who are saying the numbers are not jilted when they're online..

I was playing last night from 9pm our local time untill 5am during which time bishops had 128 vs 57 vs 68 advantage and after reset about 115 vs 80 vs 90 (this is when the bish had 'low' numbers.)

At no time did rooks or knights outnumber the bishops - but at least nit+rooks had together more players than the bish!

When the numbers balanced a bit in the morning the game became much more fun for me with rooks also capturing bases instead of being steamrolled constantly. We had a great fight at 53 which was soon after lost to bish counterattack. Even so, it was more fun fighting the bish when you could see also other rooks between the bishops.

[Mushkin1uk]

Maybe its somthing to do with when you enter the arena you are automaticaly a bish?

[MadBirdCZ]

Hmm unfortunately I dont have much free time to spend online but when I have some the numbers look almost always like this:

Bishops = Knights + Rooks where Knights = 2x Rooks

Our squad is from Bishlandia but this tour we spent flying for Rookz and what country will we be flying next tour is still unclear. But when looking at t he numbers...

Well... Being outnumbered by this great margin... You know... Ehm... I kinda like it... There is soooooooo  many enemy planes that shooting them down is like target practice

Quantity doesnt always come with quality... But must admit that if they have numbers big enuff they will get you one day no mater what tards they are

[MrRiplEy[H]]

MadBird I guess you haven't played during the last couple weeks then. A couple squads from knight moved to rooks to end the rook period in the hole. Of course result was that now knights are in the hole instead.

Interestingly none of the bishops moved to knights or rooks.

Conclusion: I'll leave it to yourselves.

[SuperD]

When I first started this game over a year ago I was automatically made a BISHOP and stuck with that.

I stopped playing for a long while and only this month got back into AH.  I had to sign up for a new name and am called SuperM now.  I was automatically defaulted to KNIGHT this time instead of BISHOP.  I don't think everybody automatically gets dumped into BISHOP now.

I played a whole day as a KNIGHT until I figured out what was going on then i swithed back to BISHOP my original country.  I just like flying with some of the names I remember from a year ago.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

The default join country has been changed to random..

But as it seems the old legacy still carries out it's fruit with players that don't give a rats bellybutton about gamebalance and choose to go with the old country.

[Tumor]

Originally posted by AKDejaVu
One thing I've noticed is the tendancy for one country to give up.  As they lose bases... more and more log.  I've been on at times and watched a country go from 150 players to 20.  You should have heard the cries of "unfair" when the numbers started dropping.

Some of the problem seems to be that there really isn't much incentive to stay if the war isn't going in your favor.

AKDejaVu

This is the true culprit.  To make a long story short, all sides suffer from the tendency of at least a small majority of players to "Take the path of least resistance", not MOST players but enough to bring imbalance to the ME.  This leads to people logging if things aren't going thier way. Basic human nature... "If ya can't beat'em, join'em.  "Survival of the Fittest (or at least the Fittest country).  It's why one side or another is consistantly hitting the side of the map that is undefended, it's why you seldom find a realistic (historical rather) fight in the MA, and it's why there's always at least a little bit of lopsidedness within the MA on any given night.  No single "country" can claim low numbers for an extended period of time, we all suffer from it, and it doesn't matter which country your on, it will happen.  Lately I've been hearing the BISH have the prime-time numbers within the MA... so what?  I've been Bish/Knit/Rook and have been the beneficiary of numbers as many times as I've been the underdog in each.  Ripsnort refer's to the circumstance in question as "The Bucket"... I tend to call it "Gamey" doesn't matter, either way... we all get our turn.  

The MA will never be representative of a "War" as most of us think "War" should be.  It's a game, and games bring gamers and gamer's outnumber "Combat Flight-Simmer's"  <<

[MrRiplEy[H]]

It would be interesting if it could be added to the statistics page.. Show statistics of the arena balance quarterly. Then we'd finally put an end to the whines and counterwhines.

At my two timezone quarters the bish have had 2:1 or greater advantage almost constantly for months. Sometimes numbers do even up even to our advantage but that's extremely rare and lasts a couple hours max. After that bishs get numbers again for the rest of the day.

The major problem is not the imbalance. It would be just ok if bish only had 20% or so more than others.. But over 100% advantage is plain ridiculous and destroys the game for the rest of the countries. With these odds it's simply not possible to achieve anything on the arena, just fight for your life and try to stop the endless wave of attackers.

[SuperD]

sounds like a direct attack on me.  gotta shake MrRiplEy[H] off my 6.

I haven't kept in touch with these message boards while I had been away.  Seems like nothing has changed very much in them at all.  The same topics are still brought up even thought they were talked about to death a year ago.

One side out numbering the other two has always been talked about and probably always is.  Players choose a side or switch sides for whatever reason they decide.  While I am relearning how to play this game again I choose to fight for my old colors and the familiar names I am used to.  Most people stay with a country because of Nationalism.  Most people only switch to a different country because their loyalty to their squadron when the squadron rotates.  

Easiest way to eliminate Nationalism is to get rid of the country names.  On victory by one side have everybody randomly and evenly get put into one of the three countries and give all three of the countries a new random name.

On Sunday night I saw pretty even numbers on all 3 sides and the rooks actually outnumbered the bishop when I checked.  

If one side is outnumbered I think they should get some type of bonus to help them.  An increased percentage of damage caused by ack guns, a reduction in costs for perk planes, a small increase in the repair time for bases, or maybe an increase in the number of perk points awarded.  This would be hard to balance.  If it was too overbalanced then one side would start complaining and try to make people switch to the other side so they would get a bonus.

Overall I think nothing really can be done about balancing sides in a free for all arena.  The numbers won't be balanced even if you start giving advantages to the outnumbered side.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Nothing personal there SuperM, I just took you for a warning example

Seriously, did you see 100:40:50 situation when you changed back to bish? If so, why on earth did you do that?

I know it's nice to fly with familiar names, but if you damage your own gameplay in exchange, is it worth it?

I guess I'm trying to understand the bishop way of thinking here.

[SuperD]

I haven't seen a drastic difference in numbers on the weekend evenings.  I have noticed it during the week though.  It was only really large when the bishops were smelling blood and trying to take out another country and force a server reset.  Otherwise it was just a bit too large in numbers.

[Innominate]

Nationalism is a good thing, what screws up numbers is people who switch to the winning side.  One side wins, a few people switch, they win again, more people switch, etc, etc, etc.