Time for a second MA?

[Hornet]

Good Lord, no. The splitting up of the community into "relaxed" and "full" realism (more like arcade and harder arcade realism) was one of the worst things to happen in Air Warrior IMO. It really fractured the community.

Agreed.

As for the rest, bigger is better. Loggin on and see 700+ people flying together is cool. 300-400? Well, its been done. HTC has to take it to the next level.

[Innominate]

For everyone commenting about the maps,

Big maps aren't the solution.  The problem with our maps now, all of them, even akdesert and trinity, isnt the lack of space, but the lack of options.  At any one moment there is usually only a couple of places where attacking is practical. Usually fields more than 25mph apart require a mission to capture.

The large gaps between fields channel huge numbers of players down into very small attack directions.  Instead of a front line, we end up with a couple of attacks consisting of hundreds of pilots at once.

Fields need to be evenly spaced, at a maximum of 25miles, except where there is a specific reason not to.  (i.e. the HQ/HQ base could be farther out than that to make it tougher to capture)

[Toad]

Originally posted by Shane
the concepts and tools sitting practically unused in the CT.

Yah, so why is that? Maybe try it for a month or two with the MA settings and see if the population goes up?

Nah, they're proving a point. We must submit.

[g00b]

I think it is High time HTC introduced East and West servers, even a European one if the numbers justify it. Have the game automatically log you into the lower ping server. Of course you could manually join the server of your choice. I see no real reason to keep this game on only one server in the world...

[J_A_B]

Hey Shane, AH doesn't have enough Japanese planes (7 total), yet AW DOS managed to do it with only 3?  Heck, even AW3 only had 8 Japanese airplanes, and two of which were near-identical versions of the VAL so I don't see how AW had any huge advantage over AH in that regard.   The AH planeset is in general superior to the AW plane set.

Heh heh heh

What would YOU do?

Personally I don't much care how AH divides itself up (Pac/Euro is but one alternative, there are many others), but certainly SOMETHING should be done about the problems inherent in the current MA design and the CT is a poor substitute.  Same-plane matchups don't bother me.  If AH were to have two different "main" arenas, then they'd need to be somehow different so each could attract a unique user base.  Simply having one with small maps and one with large maps could be enough of a difference.

IMO those (not you Shane) who whine about "splitting the community" are totally off the mark.  ALL of the top MMP games have split up communities.  All of them--no exceptions.  HTC's dogged determination to lump everyone (or almost everyone) into the single MA holds AH back far more than it helps.  Those who bemoan the "split community" of AW never fail to ignore the fact that when AW had such a split community, it was a far more popular game than AH has ever been until gross corporate mismanagement and development team alienation killed it.  

With the announcement of AH2 with its "mission theatre", it appears that HTC has recognized that AH needs greater variety and they'll provide it.  I just wish they'd do something else in the meantime.


J_A_B

[bj229r]

CT= buncha 25k dots jumpin on bunch 20k dots..yawn.

[Hornet]

Those who bemoan the "split community" of AW never fail to ignore the fact that when AW had such a split community, it was a far more popular game than AH has ever been until gross corporate mismanagement and development team alienation killed it.

hmm...not to hijack this thread but there is a strong argument to be made that even as AW was cresting to its high water mark, the game had already started to rot internally. Look at the turnover at some key spots in that Kesmai team after AW4W came to AOL...once big money or rather the hint of bigger money got involved a lot of BS corporate decisions were made.

Bottom line after AOL, AW was never totally sure again if it wanted to be the best sim or just a popular mmog. Development team alienation? I'd agree with that...they're dream game and what the masses wanted were on rapidly divergent paths. Trying to be all things to everyone paralyzes development...so why deliberately create two communities looking for different things?

[J_A_B]

very relevant questions Hornet, especially considering the path HTC is taking.  
It'll be interesting to see how it all sorts out.

J_A_B

[Shane]

Originally posted by J_A_B
What would YOU do?
J_A_B

if it were up to me, i'd simply create two identical full-planeset arenas with 400 max for starters, increasing to 500-600 if capacity required it. i'd also add a 72 hr max before any map auto resets to the next to avoid stagnation.  if it's reset before 72 hrs, all the more perkies to yas.

if both started to fill out, add a 3rd, 400 max increasing to 500-600.

why 400?  to make sure that both will always be fairly "crowded" for their size. splitting into theatres will only alienate the extra "euro-weenies" who got locked out of "their" arena and chose to log instead of "suffering" in a pac arena.  face it, there's always, even in AW, been more an ETO crowd than Pac. even in FR when they rotated theatres, some people would simply not log in if their theatre wasn't in play.

this is all hypothetical anyway, but it'll be interesting to see how the playerbase grows bewteen now and ah2 release... at that point perhaps drop back down to 1 or 2, if needed, "MAs".

i'd leave the ct, sea, ta and da as they are.

imho, this recent influx is nice and all, and as time goes by ah will *continue* to grow, slowly but surely; the crux HTC is facing now and over the next few weeks is providing new and returning, as well as existing, players a positive experience in terms of lag in order to sustain growth and retain customers.  lag is one of the biggest killers and barriers to MMPOGs.


just my .02,  ymmv.