quote from HiTech
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If you wish to debate the pro's and con's of how many people in a free environment can best increase revenue I'd love to here your view's on that question.
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OK HiTech, I think this is an issue worth discussing here and might be worth a new thread if youre serious about it as an option.
itmo stated that one of the main reasons he created freehost was because of the interest limitations of the 2 player h2h feature of Warbirds. So how many players should you allow in a h2h situation before it starts to affect revenue?
I would suggest 4 players, perhaps 6 max. The thing you miss in the 2 player h2h is teamwork and SA training. Its easy to watch for one apponent, but against 2 or 3 makes it harder. And playing wingman with your team mate against another 2 players would be a great training aid for squads. Having the ability to run a private 4 player session over the internet or via a LAN can only promote the game because it'll allow more people to appreciate the thrill that can only be experience by flying combat against multiple live apponents. Once bitten, the AH on-line world will call and as long as pricing is reasonable they will come.
Allowing multiple players will also promote AH parties much like the Quake parties, where a small group will get together for some practice and fun. These tend to attract new or inexperienced players and I have personal experience where this has created new accounts.
Because there are always limited times when you can play a h2h session due to the fact that you have to make prior arrangements with all of the people involved, it will never substitute for being able to just log on to AH and fly against multiple apponents of various skill levels anytime you want, day or night. As for those few who believe they should get something for nothing, its worth noting that most of the people who promote freehost admit that do not have WB accounts and will never get one. You will probably never get these type of people to open an account, so they were never going to be revenue anyway. Count the names on the freehost news group, there arent many different names, just a few who post a lot.
The obvious point is that there will be little need for anyone to develop a freehost style program for AH if the basic h2h is enhanced just a little. I would suspect most people who would try to run a freehost style session from their home will find that their modem limits them to 4 maybe 6 players tops anyway.
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aussie
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Any ship can be a minesweeper... once.
