"Off hours arena"

[vafiii]

Really liking the off peak hours arena. Small map, 300 or more players, bases fairly close together, short transit times, plenty of action, whereas the LW arenas typically have 200 players, huge maps and hundreds of bases with not that many good fights going on. Just curious, what's the reason for having 2 LW arenas, and a seldom used EW and MW arena? Wouldn't it be better to have 1 WW2 arena with more players such as Titanic Tuesday?

[SunBat]

Please rephrase your question to include rhymes like Corky would.

[Lusche]

We had a one arena only setup until 4 years ago. According to HTC, at that point the population simply was getting too big. We ended up with having 600-800 player on a single map at peak times.


The original post by Pyro:

Thanks to your patronage Aces High has grown to the point where a single Main Arena is no longer a sufficient solution.   It is time for us to move beyond a single main arena.  Today during the weekly terrain change, we will be revamping our arena structure with an entirely new model.  We’ve looked forward to this point because instead of just simply offering more duplicate arenas, we’ve planned to use this opportunity to diversify our offerings by making different arenas based on different time periods.  So instead of having a single arena with all planes available (which naturally emphasizes late war planes), we’ll have 3 different types of Main Arenas- early-war planes, mid-war planes, and late-war planes.  This will give us far more diversity.  

We hope that through further growth we can add even more diverse offerings such as more time periods and perhaps even time periods outside of WWII such as WWI or the Korean War.  This format will also provide more impetus for us to try and comprehensively develop the plane and vehicle set with stuff that would otherwise get swallowed up by the late-war monsters and see little use outside of special events.

Multiple Mains may seem like an oxymoron, but in fact it isn’t.  It’s not just a matter of semantics because they are all connected through the same scoring, squad, and perk point databases.  If your squad decides to spend the night in the Early MA, they don’t need to reform the squad there because it already exists.  There are no separate scores or perk points for these different arenas- it’s all shared.  In that regard, these Main Arenas are all one in the same.  It neither harms nor benefits your score or perk points to change which Main Arena you fly in from day to day.  Perk points earned in one MA count towards the same total as in any of the other Mains.  The only difference is what planes and vehicles qualify as a perk ride varies from arena to arena.

Being in this business a long time, we understand that people are creatures of habit and old habits die-hard.  Going through any major change is uncomfortable until people become acclimated to the change.  This change is especially difficult because we cannot simply add these new arenas; we need to redistribute how the arenas are populated.  To accomplish that, we’re going to be reducing arena caps so as to not have one arena dominate just by virtue of everybody following the herd.  We’ll also be using small terrains exclusively for now, but that is not a permanent change.  Once we’re comfortable that people have acclimated to the new format, we’ll begin to work those elements back in.  

With players spreading out, we are aware of the need for better tools to find and communicate with your buddies.  We will be working on some new tools to handle this but for now that can be accomplished with the squadron message of the day. (MOTD).  The squad MOTD will reach across all the Main Arena’s so the squad leader can be sure that everybody knows where to go on a given night.

Once again, thanks for your support.  We hope you will find these changes refreshing.  We’ve waited a long time to get here and we’re very excited about the many development directions this opens.

http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,187156.0.html

[Nwbie]

Please rephrase your question to include rhymes like Corky would.

This received a -genuine- guffaw

 



NwBie

[WOOD1]

I don't like the fact that every time I play, and I haven't been able to play that often for the past few months due to illness, the arena gets locked and then closes shortly after I get into a flight.  Am I just lucky or what as far as logging on 15 minutes before the arena closes?  What's wrong with locking the arena but giving it more time, or better yet, how about a message on the log in screen warning me I'm about to waste my time?

[Lusche]

I don't like the fact that every time I play, and I haven't been able to play that often for the past few months due to illness, the arena gets locked and then closes shortly after I get into a flight.  Am I just lucky or what as far as logging on 15 minutes before the arena closes?  What's wrong with locking the arena but giving it more time, or better yet, how about a message on the log in screen warning me I'm about to waste my time?

It's same time every day. Offpeak runs 1 am to 4 pm. Arenas get locked 5 mins before and players are booted 10 mins after that.

[save]

 I really would like the arena time changes moved ahead one hour.
ie change @ midnight for CET .

[vafiii]

Is having 600 to 800 people on 1 map a bad thing? When you divide that among 3 teams with many of those players in GV's, it doesn't seem like a lot of players. Especially when there's several hundred bases on most of the maps. On a normal night there's approximately 200 players in a LW arena. That's only 66 per side. Assuming half are in GV's that doesn't leave a lot of pilots, maybe 30 per side?

[Lusche]

Assuming half are in GV's

This depends a lot of map, but on average, about 20% of the active players are in a GV.

Is having 600 to 800 people on 1 map a bad thing?

Some will say yes, some will say no, but in the end it matters what HTC thinks, and they stated: Yes, it is. And we had this topic quite a few times over the years

[rvflyer]

Is having 600 to 800 people on 1 map a bad thing? When you divide that among 3 teams with many of those players in GV's, it doesn't seem like a lot of players. Especially when there's several hundred bases on most of the maps. On a normal night there's approximately 200 players in a LW arena. That's only 66 per side. Assuming half are in GV's that doesn't leave a lot of pilots, maybe 30 per side?

You have not seen or heard the whines about frame rates on TT?