Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aces High General Discussion => Topic started by: AceHavok on June 17, 2016, 05:56:29 PM
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Hi everyone! <S>
Don't know how many of you remember me. I just have a few questions on the state of the game. I really miss everyone I used to fly with had some of my best gaming experiences on this game. Could I have a update on the state of the game?
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Pretty much the same honestly
The player base has died and the fights can be smaller, but there are still fun furballs and still plenty of people to shoot at. Tanks are more popular. There are still people and squads dedicated to winning the map. There are still poop talkers. The special events are great, I'd highly recommend checking those out. The majority of the people are still pretty cool.
They are working on a new game. You can download the Beta on the forums. It's also playable online.
Hope that helps. When you return it will feel like you never left hahaha
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Same as ever. Fewer numbers. Lots to do. Come back... bring friends. :airplane: :salute
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I also had an urge to come back. Miss flight sims, planes and the furballs. That said, when I stopped playing last time it was partly due to the fact that there were <200 players on at a time and that seemed to mark the point at which there was more sitting around than fighting. Since I've been checking back over the last week, I've never seen more than 180 on at a given time...at most. With 180 players you have on average 60 per side. Of those 60, between 10-15 will be in tower on average. Of the remaining 45 or so that are not in tower, roughly a third can be counted on to be camping GV spawns somewhere. This leaves 30 players per side in flight. Of those, you will have your milkrunners, horders and your lone wolves all playing different spots on a vast map where bases outnumber players. Not good. Looking at the kill counts, the decrease in player density is definitely having a direct impact on the number of kills logged. Kills per tour in LW MA last month came in at 143k. That figure is barely 50% of what it was when I stopped playing in Sep '13 (279k) and roughly a quarter of the volume when I started playing in Sep '07 (716k player kills). Entertainment value now is significantly less than what it was for the same $15.
I hope to see this most awesome of flight sims find a revival in AHIII, but the VVI is still very negative and the business model is not competitive enough to stop the player bleed. Whoever is flying this business is looking at this situation...more or less.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nhxm5QEbYI
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I get bored a lot and play maybe once a week now, usually on a weekend when numbers in the arena may break the 200 barrier. In the off hours numbers will be as low as 40 and with the size of the maps it can be hard to find a fight.
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Has HTC considered becoming a Free to play game? That would certainly attract more players. You would just need some sort of micro transactions or premium accounts to make up for it.
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Not sure how much longer this can go on. Warning: Speculation to follow.
With 8,000-10000 subscribers back in the day, gross monthly income would have been on the order of $120k or an an estimated 1.4 mil annually. After taxes and facility/server schtuff you'd be looking at perhaps 1 million net if you were lucky and splitting that at least 10 ways. Those were the good days. Not sure what current subscriber numbers are looking like now, but if the player base has dropped by 2/3, so has revenue. That would also indicate an avg employee paycheck dropping from 100k/yr to a little over 30k. That is a pretty devastating cut. There are multiple reasons to resist change. (More speculation)
1. You're stubborn. The way you'll do it is the way you've done it. <-Period.
2. You don't need the money. Make the game better when you feel like it, if you feel like it. Some small businesses/LLCs can actually experience a net benefit by being at the top of one tax bracket vs being on the low end of a higher tax bracket.
3. You've done the maths and you can't see a way to change your business model without making things worse. F2P usually fails.
4. Organizational panic and paralysis. The need to "do something now" on multiple fronts leads to little or no action on any front.
Pure speculation. None of the above theories appears to be particularly preferable from a game/player standpoint. Hate to see that the game has continued a slow death :(
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Entertainment value now is significantly less than what it was for the same $15.
Well, I suppose that depends on your definition of "entertainment value." I was in Midwar tonight and spent a memorable and most enjoyable half hour fighting Charger3. You really don't need to have 600 people online to have fun. You just need people who want to fight.
- oldman
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Not sure how much longer this can go on. Warning: Speculation to follow.
With 8,000-10000 subscribers back in the day, gross monthly income would have been on the order of $120k or an an estimated 1.4 mil annually. After taxes and facility/server schtuff you'd be looking at perhaps 1 million net if you were lucky and splitting that at least 10 ways. Those were the good days. Not sure what current subscriber numbers are looking like now, but if the player base has dropped by 2/3, so has revenue. That would also indicate an avg employee paycheck dropping from 100k/yr to a little over 30k. That is a pretty devastating cut. There are multiple reasons to resist change. (More speculation)
1. You're stubborn. The way you'll do it is the way you've done it. <-Period.
2. You don't need the money. Make the game better when you feel like it, if you feel like it. Some small businesses/LLCs can actually experience a net benefit by being at the top of one tax bracket vs being on the low end of a higher tax bracket.
3. You've done the maths and you can't see a way to change your business model without making things worse. F2P usually fails.
4. Organizational panic and paralysis. The need to "do something now" on multiple fronts leads to little or no action on any front.
Pure speculation. None of the above theories appears to be particularly preferable from a game/player standpoint. Hate to see that the game has continued a slow death :(
You don't think some sort of Micro transactions would help that issue? It could be anything from purchasing skins to perks.
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You don't think some sort of Micro transactions would help that issue? It could be anything from purchasing skins to perks.
most like the micro transaction we have now.
semp
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Th funniest part of this entire thread is some idiot comes in to check out the state of the game, than begins making assumptions about the state of the business.
Ya just gotta love how there are so many expert idiots in this world....................
Hey Skuzzy and Hitech, how about just dumping this forum completely? If morons want to chat, let them do it in game......................
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I remember you your the bloke who had the goats :old:
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I remember you your the bloke who had the goats :old:
I had goats. They're better than sheep... handles and all that.
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Come back and bring friends.
Ride the storm of low numbers now. It should pick up with the release of AH3. I am pretty sure we will begin to see advertisements again...
That being said, get in the game again so you can hone your skills...
IMHO
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Well, I suppose that depends on your definition of "entertainment value." I was in Midwar tonight and spent a memorable and most enjoyable half hour fighting Charger3. You really don't need to have 600 people online to have fun. You just need people who want to fight.
- oldman
:aok
I find you can either complain or you can have fun,the choice is up to you!
Just a couple of old men agreeing...... :old:
:salute
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Well, I suppose that depends on your definition of "entertainment value." I was in Midwar tonight and spent a memorable and most enjoyable half hour fighting Charger3. You really don't need to have 600 people online to have fun. You just need people who want to fight.
- oldman
I've had similar experiences. It's just that from where I'm sitting the odds of having said experiences on a semi-routine basis appear to be dwindling fast. When you start seeing old time AH players on other forums, you know people are looking for something better. I think most of us realize there are aspects of AH that are unmatched but that potential isn't getting any traction of late. Just checked LW numbers: 107 players...midday Saturday...while school is out. :confused:
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You don't think some sort of Micro transactions would help that issue? It could be anything from purchasing skins to perks.
I'd never say never to that. There do seem to be some decent F2P models out there, but they are the exception.
Over the last 2-3 months I put some 80 hours into Mechwarrior Online. Their system was actually rather interesting but it would be a pretty radical change. Not sure how successful it is for them either. The way it works is you have maybe 20% of the rides available for free from one week to the next. This way you don't really feel shorted because you still have a pretty decent selection of rides. It encourages people to try new rides and gets them hooked on the ones they like. Using these free "mechs" you begin grinding out currency (similar to perk points) and can purchase a ride that you can use all the time and customize to your liking with colors/skins that you also purchase for in-game or real currency.
New players start out with a mech bay (hangar) that can hold 4 mechs. Once you purchase your first 4 rides, the only way you can purchase additional mechs is to spend $1.50 worth of real money for an additional mech bay slot to park the darn thing. This struck me as pretty fair overall.
Applied to AH, this would mean all rides would have to have a cost assigned to them. (Personally, I'd make the cost directly proportional to use in the previous tour, likely making the P-51D the most expensive ride in the game for in-game currency and giving players incentive to buy unique rides that don't see much use) A new player would be greeted with an income bonus of some kind his first couple weeks to ensure he has enough currency to buy a few rides. If he doesn't want to purchase one for real or in-game currency he can fall back on the 25 free to play rides for that week. (Also, purchased rides have a slight income boost, giving you incentive to fly planes you own) If said new player wanted to unlock every ride in the game at the cost of $1.50 each beyond the first 4 hangar slots, it would cost him $180 bucks, equivalent to a 1yr sub. That is before the 25 cent skin downloads etc. What happens once the player drops the $200 bucks his first year? He plays for free. That may seem like a big loss when looking at long-term players who have dropped $1,800 bucks on AH subs over the last decade, but at this point what AH needs is new players. People who pay $180/yr to play a game year after year are the exception, not the norm.
In terms of transitioning: All players would be allowed to subscribe to a $15/mo. premium acct with full access to all rides (like we have now). Those that don't opt in have access to the weekly rotation of trial rides and can play/pay their way through an awesome, fun, non-p2w game. Existing players who opt out of their existing subs would be able to keep their existing perks and cash them in for currency at their leisure, ensuring they are treated well during the transition.
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I agree to a point, maybe 5$ a month for early war birds, 10$ for mid war birds and 15$ for late war birds. Finding fights is not a problem during U.S prime time, but all other times can be a bit bleak.
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I agree to a point, maybe 5$ a month for early war birds, 10$ for mid war birds and 15$ for late war birds. Finding fights is not a problem during U.S prime time, but all other times can be a bit bleak.
Like the simplicity of it, but given that the most action will always be late-war centric, there would definitely be complaints that the game is "pay to win" under such a system.
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thats the whole point, get a bunch of new guys hooked at 5$ then they will need to shell out 10 or 15$ to be competitive
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Free would attract the wrong type of players.
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Free would attract the wrong type of players.
Perhaps. But it would attract players and that is preferable to the game going belly-up. This is not a stupid point-click game. The more patient folks (aka mature) would have a higher tolerance for a game that makes you think. The point is to get a higher level of exposure and first time players.
thats the whole point, get a bunch of new guys hooked at 5$ then they will need to shell out 10 or 15$ to be competitive
For a game to be great it must be fair. Any deviation from a fair game makes the game flawed. Victory here should not go to the deepest pockets or the folks most willing to dish dough into a digital hobby. I submit that player satisfaction would drop for killers and victims in instances where the $15 subscriber kills the $5 subscriber or vice versa. What good would a salute be in such an instance? Ch200 would get even more unfriendly. Also, I'd guess that new customers be more likely to do the $5 sub to feel out the game, get stomped and never come back. That's been an issue for this kinda of game from the get-go and it'd probably just get worse. $.02
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make your own game and make it free to play.
semp
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make your own game and make it free to play.
semp
Cool story bro. Will probably check in after another year or two if the game is still around. Till then, I'm out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U34xsSZ5PA
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Cool story bro. Will probably check in after another year or two if the game is still around. Till then, I'm out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U34xsSZ5PA
keep your word and dont come back for 1 or 2 years.
semp
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Has HTC considered becoming a Free to play game? That would certainly attract more players. You would just need some sort of micro transactions or premium accounts to make up for it.
Have you considered working for free?
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Hi everyone! <S>
Why think about coming back?
Just come back! :aok