Now let's set a minor goal for an online pilot--becoming an ace. For this to happen, five characters must cease to exist for every ace. Thus, only 1 in 6, or 16.7% of the characters can ever achieve this goal. Accordingly, even minor success in the game will never be achieved by 83% of the characters.
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First of all, I don't accept your premise. Becoming an Ace is NOT an "increadibly minor goal." Achieving Ace status is a MAJOR GOAL!
Shooting down 5 enemy aircraft was worthy of a newspaper article on your life story during World War One (and a book deal after the war). I'd like to see the game blare trumpets and wave flags for any player who's alter ego becomes an Ace. That's a MAJOR accomplishment!
And remember that not all air victories result in the death of the pilot who was shot down. Pilots can (and do) bail out of their aircraft, surviving to fight another day. However, kills are credited even when the enemy pilot survives.
16.5% of alter egos become aces, but a higher percentage of players will experience becomeing an ace on occasion.
The proportion of Ace OAEs in the Beta Test to achieve Ace status was about 15% (which aproximates your figure), but as it was a WW1 sim, we didn't have any parachutes.
Even so, I expect that many players will have the experience of becoming an Ace, at least on occassion.
It just doesn't happen to ALL the players ALL of the time. It happens to some of the players much of the time and many of the players some of the time.
Thus the skilled players will become aces many times and the less skilled players will become aces few times.
Another factor increasing the odds of achieving ace status: Death is distributed on a bell curve as a factor of player skill. Less skilled pilots will fly more alter egos (as the less skilled die more often than the highly skilled). Each time one of the less skilled dies, he doesn't disapper. He creates a NEW alter ego that can also be shot down.
At root level, the OAE can be reduced to stats tracking from death to death with built-in bonuses based upon the length of time between those two points (and an option for the player to give a name to this line segment and call "it" a pilot).
That's all the OAE really is! It's a simulated pilot. Let's not complicate matters by calling it a "character" or we might get confused with images of complex and lengthy personal characteristics.
ISHMAEL