Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aces High General Discussion => Topic started by: Lusche on February 11, 2018, 10:38:15 AM
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Or: The closest thing to the old "yearly stats update" you will get from me :D
Some preliminary notes:
- All data is based on the available score & stats pages
- For player data, the scores of every pilot with at least one kill or one death in a given tour has been used.
- Between September 2006 and September 2007, the (then) new EW and MW arenas had no seperate scores, they were part of LW
- I'm limiting my commentary while posting this time, feel free to ask any specific questions you might have.
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Let's start with "What have the players been doing?":
(https://i.imgur.com/rTWAIQ3.png)
And, for the last three years, a bit more detailed:
(https://i.imgur.com/n4jcVVv.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/r6yA24i.png)
Note that in this chart, Ground to Air kills include those by manned acks.
(https://i.imgur.com/omLpPr0.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/u8vNO0s.png)
More charts are coming...
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(https://i.imgur.com/Ggzf2q5.png)
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In chart #4, each year is total kills of all arenas added together?
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In chart #4, each year is total kills of all arenas added together?
It's the LW arena only, with the exception given in the preliminary notes.
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It's the LW arena only, with the exception given in the preliminary notes.
Yes, sorry -- I didn't write my question that well.
I remember when we had multiple servers and more than one LW arena. I don't remember when that was or how it was handled in score stats listed from HTC. If we had that during the time period you analyzed, the stats are for all LW arenas added together, correct?
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Yes, sorry -- I didn't write my question that well.
I remember when we had multiple servers and more than one LW arena. I don't remember when that was or how it was handled in score stats listed from HTC. If we had that during the time period you analyzed, the stats are for all LW arenas added together, correct?
Yes, all LW arenas were combined in the stats.
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'Tank Combat Domination Chart'
Displaying Kills-Deaths is a good way to check for any kind of 'arena dominance' some plane or GV may have:
(https://i.imgur.com/WxR9JvF.png)
Ever since AH3 went live, the T-34/85 is the undisputed king of the battlefield. Even the slight increase in perk cost didn't change anything.
Last year, almost 42% of all tank on tank kills had been made by the T-34/85. The once not entirely uncommon German tank destroyers almost don't appear on the battlefield anymore.
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Well done Lusche. Very interesting.
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'Tank Combat Domination Chart'
Displaying Kills-Deaths is a good way to check for any kind of 'arena dominance' some plane or GV may have:
(https://i.imgur.com/WxR9JvF.png)
Ever since AH3 went live, the T-34/85 is the undisputed king of the battlefield. Even the slight increase in perk cost didn't change anything.
Last year, almost 42% of all tank on tank kills had been made by the T-34/85. The once not entirely uncommon German tank destroyers almost don't appear on the battlefield anymore.
Can you do a similar chart for airplanes?
Seems the t34 85 should be perked more..
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Absolutely fascinating Lusche, many thanks for the work!
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Or: The closest thing to the old "yearly stats update" you will get from me :D
Some preliminary notes:
- All data is based on the available score & stats pages
- For player data, the scores of every pilot with at least one kill or one death in a given tour has been used.
- Between September 2006 and September 2007, the (then) new EW and MW arenas had no seperate scores, they were part of LW
- I'm limiting my commentary while posting this time, feel free to ask any specific questions you might have.
------
Amazing....where does a regular player dig up all these nifty charts
Let's start with "What have the players been doing?":
(https://i.imgur.com/rTWAIQ3.png)
And, for the last three years, a bit more detailed:
(https://i.imgur.com/n4jcVVv.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/r6yA24i.png)
Note that in this chart, Ground to Air kills include those by manned acks.
(https://i.imgur.com/omLpPr0.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/u8vNO0s.png)
More charts are coming...
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Amazing....where does a regular player dig up all these nifty charts
The website. He just compiles it and puts it into a picture so people can follow it more easily.
Wiley.
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4th chart down is the concerning one. :old:
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What happened from 2000 to 2007 that we can replicate?
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What happened from 2000 to 2007 that we can replicate?
I just think there was way less competition. No warthunder, world of tanks/planes/ships, Il2's with amazing graphics. Most of these adopting F2P models.
All I can remember from those years were the missions, the mammoth un-balancing squads and titanic tuesdays with 500+ players in one arena. Scenarios with 100+ a side.
Someone posted a screenshot the other day of our squadron having Fifteen players online :eek: I'm sure claim jumpers, LCA or Jokers could put that to shame. More people, More squads, bigger battles and fights all over the map.
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See Rule #4
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I just think there was way less competition. No warthunder, world of tanks/planes/ships, Il2's
I don't think that's it.
Warthunder and World of Warplanes started 5 years after 2007.
What was causing the upward trend of 2000-2007?
The demise of Air Warrior might have added players to AH. Air Warrior ended in December, 2001. But there was already a strong uptrend in AH from 2000 to 2001. Also, it would seem odd that a game that ended in 2001 would still be adding more players each year all the way out to 2007 to AH.
Just that Aces High was new? I don't think it was that. There were Air Warrior, Warbirds, and Fighter Ace, and even Il-2 Sturmovik, so the genre was not brand new and not without competition.
What changed in 2007-2008?
There was an economic crash. But there was an economic crash in 2000 as well.
There was one dynamic in 2000-2007, and a switch flipped giving another dynamic in 2008+. But what was that switch precisely in 2007/2008, and what was the driving dynamic 2000-2007?
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4th chart down is the concerning one. :old:
Alarming even.
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What was causing the upward trend of 2000-2007?
The movie "Pearl Harbor" came out in 2001 :noid
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The movie "Pearl Harbor" came out in 2001 :noid
"Norbit" came out in 2007. :noid
Wiley.
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I used to see advertisements on TV fairly regularly during that time. I can't remember the last time I saw an ad during a show about flight or WWII. Also, starting with AH2 you needed an actual gaming system to play and it took me a couple years to save up for a gaming rig. 8v8 FTP arenas also went away during that time and the megahorde megasquad in missions were at their peak which killed a lot of the good old fashioned furballs and mass bomber missions in favor of 50 p38s at 20k augering in flatening bases because it's easier than actual combat. It's what caused me to go solo in favor of finding my own fights and ways to grief the griefers.
My observation anyways
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Can you do a similar chart for airplanes?
Seems the t34 85 should be perked more..
I was about to do one, but stopped halway through it. The planes at the top would be the very same already shown in "Top A2A killers", and the 'dominance' shown would not be anywhere as great as the one of the T34/85.
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and a switch flipped giving another dynamic in 2008+. But what was that switch precisely in 2007/2008
I think there was no specific, singular switch that was flipped but a combination of a lot of issues.
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You dont need all those statistics to see the drop, just look at the bottom of the forum:
"Most Online Ever: 351 (April 02, 2008, 09:09:15 PM) ". <--- This was the moment before a whole heap of credit cards failed to charge (HT mentioned that once).
It was near the moment the economy exploded. That crash was much worse then the tech bubble of 01 because it was based around housing which effects practically everyone, even to this day.
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This is basically the same chart I posted in that other thread a few days ago. Scope was increased back to tour 12 (2001) and instead of hour played per capture it's now captures/hour for easier viewing:
(https://i.imgur.com/69MPYtB.png)
And an updated chart about base capture modes:
(https://i.imgur.com/eB5dfXq.png)
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You dont need all those statistics to see the drop, just look at the bottom of the forum:
"Most Online Ever: 351 (April 02, 2008, 09:09:15 PM) ". <--- This was the moment before a whole heap of credit cards failed to charge (HT mentioned that once).
<snip>
Actually, that number was bogus due to spammers. It took a long while to get that under control.
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You sure skuzzy? It works out about to around 7 times as many forum users concurrently. If we carry it over to the game, the number fits a well (to that timeline).
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You sure skuzzy? It works out about to around 7 times as many forum users concurrently. If we carry it over to the game, the number fits a well (to that timeline).
You can't use "most online" for that, as this represents a momentary peak in uses which can come from various reasons. Forum outrages because the game servers went down for an hour... the resulting peak in users online would (for example) very much depend on which time of the day this is happening.
And even equating things like posts per moth (or similar) with ingame activity is a dubious thing, because it will not take into account cultural changes - players may just been less interested in registering on a game forum these days.
Fortunately, ingame activities & number can be tracked easily without having to rely on the forum oracle :D
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You sure skuzzy? It works out about to around 7 times as many forum users concurrently. If we carry it over to the game, the number fits a well (to that timeline).
Yes, as I was the one fighting them, I am very sure of where that came from.
Those peak numbers do not mean much of anything as they include guest, bots, and just about any attempt to open anything in SMF, even if it does not exist.
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Yes, as I was the one fighting them, I am very sure of where that came from.
Those peak numbers do not mean much of anything as they include guest, bots, and just about any attempt to open anything in SMF, even if it does not exist.
As a moderator of another forum, I can attest that spambots and paid spammers for a while were inundating and overwhelming standard defences for a bit. Then we started using blacklists and whitelists and eventually an anti-spam service that bolted into the SMF software and the volume of spam we had to deal with went close to zero per month. We then put in other rules that made it very dissuading for the paid spammers to even bother by putting lists...but still...FML...it was a pain for a while.
That said, the stats are a little disconcerting with the slow and gradual drop... again, back to my point that maybe Aces High needs to add Aces Deep to the engine? Talk about a untapped market for MMO naval simulators...
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What happened from 2000 to 2007 that we can replicate?
Number of people online trippled.
Impossible today without growing world population by 50%.
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Number of people online trippled.
Impossible today without growing world population by 50%.
Number of people online tripped from 2007 to 2017 as well, though.
So, I don't think that's it.
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That fourth chart is telling me that the upset of GVer to Airmen ratio killed Aces High ... or the GVer allowed Aces High to stay in business :lol
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The 4th chart clearly represents that the majority of the air combat players stopped playing, which is what actually created the perception of smaller fights, and less action around the map. The tanking has decreased, but it's always been IMO an "add on" a secondary part of AH. So fighters leaving will shrink the tanking also. These charts clearly represent that fighter and air combat create the greatest % of #s In range. More commercials, more emphasis on fighter Combat in videos. Will help go a ways in bringjng back the air combat #s and #s overall.
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what i noticed about 2009 era to present, is back then, about every 6 months or less,something new was added to the game. you had something to ask for, debate and hope for, and when something was added, everybody tried it for a month or so. then just as you were getting tired of it, the next thing was added. another thing i remember was....in summer time, there were always a large number of younger players that started playing right after school ended......a bunch would stay on after school started the following school year.....and ofcourse there were commercials....foreign players were playing and used their own channels, squads recruitted and ran missions.....i dont see any of that anymore.
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Alpini, AH was caught up in a perfect storm sort of speak. Bad economy, tablets, Xbox and the like, plus cell phones all lead to declining computer sells. Add to that ever aging baby boomers. Now add in the inflated price for computer equipment with bitcoin and such things.
Downward trend in game play is not because of the game but all those things that surround the game.
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that sounds good...but during the same period i saw people in the TENS of thousands paying to play xbox live, as well as other online games....so there was and still is a large number of people worldwide who are willing to pay and play an online line game....just not ours, as an example. for aces high, numbers keep decreasing, a large number of older payers who had left...have come back, and yet player numbers are still decreasing....in FSO for example, several years ago you had 150-200 per side...currently WITH the influx of returning players we get about 90 perside. thats about 50% or less then what we used to get. in other arenas, we used to have large numbers in the main arena, mid war,early war, the dueling arena,and ww1...ALL AT THE SAME TIME. there were times when arenas were at peak capacity and you had to wait to get in,so you went to another arena for a time and checked back. when was the last time that happened???