Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aces High General Discussion => Topic started by: hblair on November 06, 2002, 12:26:27 AM
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Logged on, rooks reduced to home island, I up and run into a fighter sweep from a country that outnumbers us 3:1. I kill a few of them but 3-4 pin me down and kill me. I logged, and it was one of those rare instances when I was honestly mad.
I think what we're all looking for is input HT, any kind of input on your view of this problem. I wouldn't be surprised if you already have some solution coded. But not knowing if you even think there's a problem here is kinda worrisome.
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i have said it before , if the rooks don't wan't to fly , you can't make them, rooks have the numbers , they just don't want to fly, don't punish the bish and knights because of that.
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Bah, you're just afraid of losing your gang/vulch fest
My experiences pretty much mirror yours Hblair.
J_A_B
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Originally posted by john9001
i have said it before , if the rooks don't wan't to fly , you can't make them, rooks have the numbers , they just don't want to fly, don't punish the bish and knights because of that.
Utter and complete roadkill. If you actually believe this idiocy, well, you're a moron.
Rooks have roughly the same percentage of people flying as any other side.
RJO nights are rare, and when they are happening we have a far, far, far greater percentage of Rooks flying than do the Knits or Bish.
Even on RJO night we can no longer exceed the casual numbers of the Knights.
If the Knights held a "KJO" night or the Bishops held a "BJO" night they'd exceed 400 players.
If you honestly think that Rooks should hold RJO night every night just so we can be competitive, you're completely off your rocker. We have jobs, families and lives just like you (assuming you do) and can't play AH eight hours a day.
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Originally posted by hblair
Logged on, rooks reduced to home island,
yes it is... post this kind of pix under the numbers tracking thread, with time, date and map.
keep 'em all in one thread for better continuity.
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When things are like this, the game's rigged.
Nobody wants to lose their bucks against a rigged jackpot machine.
Fix it.
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When I first came to ah I was a rook. The numbers were ok but I joined a lw squad and went knight. The knights were putting together KAG at the time. After it broke down do to a good portion of the lw quitting AH we went back to rooks for a 6 days.
All we got were arguements, squeaking and whining over the country channel. Half my squad would have quit the squad then stay as a rook. We actually lost a few squaddies the day we went rook. So we jumped ship again. We had every intention of going rook because of the shift in numbers we saw.
You could not drag us back to rooks and its not because of the numbers issues.
If it was fun to fly with the rooks the numbers wouldnt matter.
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Look, switch to the Bish or Nits. Will that make the problem worse? YES! Then maybe HTC will take it seriously.
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Would you rather be told which country you will be flying for that evening?
What about squads?
Side balancing is an issue, but in my opinion, needs to be addressed at the community level, not by HTC. If sides are out of balance, should it be up to HTC which country you fly for?
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Originally posted by Oedipus
Waaah! ?
"It's just a game. Play and get over it"
Oed
It's just tough. you want to play but sometimes the situation is so dire that little enjoyment can be had. So there is no joy in just playing. What would you have us do? Keep upping from 1 of 4 bases only to get vulched in the first 30 seconds?
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Wotan
what you saw was the effect of getting gang banged for months. not the reason for getting gang banged for months.
It is cool that you tried to help. But dont think you saw the cause..you saw a symptom.
Well meaning people jump to rook for a night and find out its not fun at all. So they focus on some syptom as they go back to their other countries where the game is frankly 10 times easier to be successful at and far less stressful as you pick and choose how you will win as apposed to having how you will lose forced on you.
But thanks for deciding that the rooks deserve this treatment. In reallity you found what all rooks find out. Its not fun being hammered. They have taken it for months and you coudnt take it for a week.
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Originally posted by Greese
Would you rather be told which country you will be flying for that evening?
What about squads?
Side balancing is an issue, but in my opinion, needs to be addressed at the community level, not by HTC. If sides are out of balance, should it be up to HTC which country you fly for?
HTC doesn't have to neccessarily tell us which country to fly for. They could penalize pilots scores and/or perk point values if the country they are flying (we'll say country #2) for has a large ratio (whatever ratio is appropriate) of pilots over country #1. But if they attack country #3 which has a comparable number of pilots, there's no penalty.
But the important thing is just knowing whether or not HT sees a problem with this.
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I'm of the mind that things like this tend to fluctuate over time and even things out. Lately, however, I've been having a change of heart about it for reasons other than have been mentioned here.
Last night after almost 200 Knights and 140 Bishops reset 80 Rooks on the Pacific map, we moved to the Baltic... where promptly 50 Bishops attacked seven (yes, seven) Rooks who decided to stick around after the reset and 70 or so Knights attacked undefended Bishops bases in the east.
What's happened to the incentive to find the fight? 50 against 70 sounds like a fun matchup, and yet these two sides were avoiding one another and going for the easy land grabs with overwhelming and insurmountable odds. Somehow that seems anathema to what an air combat simulator is all about, but maybe that's just me.
I can only guess that the emphasis on winning the war and earning perk points for it causes this kind of behavior. The funny thing is that in an hour of furballing and mixing it up, it's possible to get far more perk points from combat alone than from resetting the map. And yet the need to take bases (and I'm not against grabbing bases, mind you) perpetuates a low-risk, low-resistence sort of strategy. The real key to winning is to take as many undefended or lightly defended bases as possible and avoid quagmire 50 vs. 70 situations that stall base capture. In other words, the strategy for successfully resetting the map in AH is not necessarily the same strategy for ensuring plentiful and balanced air combat. So long as "winning" remains the focus without side-balancing mechanisms in place, one side will always be the red-headed stepchild.
Just some thoughts.
-- Todd/Leviathn
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Thats not quite true Pongo,
We switched to rooks some time ago. Before the number swing was as drastic as it is now. We went back to knights at the time when the knights spent 7 consecutive weeks in the bucket.
I dont care much about numbers. With the bish and the knights we always found a few guys we could fly with. As rook all we got was grief.
If I remember correctly the time we went to rook was about the same time the assissins switched from bish to rook. They didnt stay there to much longer then we did. They went back Bish. Ofcourse I could be wrong.
As for rooks deserving it.... I could careless about that. I just offered the experience of my squad and myself. You may claim the numbers caused what we saw but I am more likely to believe its the other way around.
Anyway jg26 switched sosthe neighborhood may be improving over there.
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I believe it is a stigma thing now. The rooks are always outnumbered, why be a rook?
I think we could try a 4th piece (ie. pawn, king, queen) and rotate out a piece every reset. Still 3 teams but no stigma attached to a silly chess peice.
Have the system assign each player to the team with the lowest numbers or if a squad member is already on assign them to the team their squad is on. They can always change teams after log on (1 per 12 hours).
Also, this would mix the teams up a bit. You hate your opponent until you get a chance to fly with him.
F.
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Originally posted by Wotan
If I remember correctly the time we went to rook was about the same time the assissins switched from bish to rook. They didnt stay there to much longer then we did. They went back Bish. Ofcourse I could be wrong.
Assassins have been rook for three years, with maybe 4-8 weeks each year spent in another country.
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Maybe the "perk" points for winning war have some effect on people. I say do away with perk points for winning war. If you can't get perk points from shooting down planes, well then you shouldn't get perk points.
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Originally posted by Thrawn
Look, switch to the Bish or Nits. Will that make the problem worse? YES! Then maybe HTC will take it seriously.
sure... all rooks go knits/bish.
here's what we'd see - knits and bish both racing to reset an emoty rook land. the only bish/knits actually fighting each other would be those rooks who went over.
:rolleyes:
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Originally posted by Shane
sure... all rooks go knits/bish.
here's what we'd see - knits and bish both racing to reset an emoty rook land. the only bish/knits actually fighting each other would be those rooks who went over.
:rolleyes:
One solution could be to make an MA reset happen only when it's a decisive victory.
Attacking a country untill they are down to 2 fields is all too easy, make it so that in order to win the war you have to have 70% or more of the fields. That would ensure that one country doesn't get gangbangeg into non existance and will keep the other two teams fighting eachother....tie that in with having 4-6 uncapturable bases for each team and it may work.
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HTC isn't likely to give a toejam about this situation as long their bottom line doesn't decrease. They get each of our $15 per month whether we fly or not. If the Rooks yanked their accounts en masse and HTC suddenly lost a big chunk of revenue, they might sit up and take notice. This will never happen, though, so forget about any intervention by HTC.
As has been pointed out by others, there is absolutely ZERO incentive for new players to go/stay Rooks in the current environment. The only growth in numbers is going to have to come from the more experienced player base, and it is the big squads that have it in their power to effect some significant changes. These squads fall into two basic categories.
First, there are the squads who've grown so fat and lazy from riding the gravy train that they can no longer be competitive with more equal numbers, if they ever were at all. Members of this type of squad will offer up all sorts of rationalizations for why they won't move to Rooks, or tried Rooks but didn't stay. Expect no help from this lot; they like things just fine they way they are now.
Then there are the squads who are probably just as tired of the situation as the Rooks are. The imbalance undoubtably offends their sense of sportsmanship and fair play, as it does ours. It can't be much of a challenge attacking bases that are undefended or barely defended, either. I imagine these are the squads who opt to fight Bishops or Knights while their teammates are busy banging away on the Rooks, although eventually they WILL join in for the reset. These are the squads we should be looking to for relief. If we could somehow get just a few of these squads over to Rooks, I think it would make a tremendous difference. But getting them to move is going to be the challenge. I regret that I have no bright ideas. I think it is like case of someone getting mugged on a city street and screaming for help; everyone hears it and knows someone should call the cops, but nobody does anything because they think someone ELSE is going to take care of it.
Whoever compared being in Rooks to what it must've been like to be a Luftwaffe pilot towards the end of WW2 really pegged it. It's a challenge all right, but the fun is really beginning to wear thin. I will not leave Rooks because I prefer to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. I love scenarios, and can get into the gamey side of AH when Rooks aren't too badly in the bucket. But, if this situation keeps up too much longer, at some point I may just bag it and find more pleasant ways to spend the few evenings a week I can now spend in AH. Sadly, I can't justify shelling out $15/month to HTC just to maintain an account for scenarios, so I won't be the only one losing if that day ever comes.
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Dont do anything to the perk points for reset. that was added to stop the "keep them to 2 fields forever" that was going on. That was way worse then getting reset way way way worse. The perk points for reset is a good thing
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Originally posted by MrLars
Attacking a country untill they are down to 2 fields is all too easy, make it so that in order to win the war you have to have 70% or more of the fields. That would ensure that one country doesn't get gangbangeg into non existance and will keep the other two teams fighting eachother....tie that in with having 4-6 uncapturable bases for each team and it may work.
yuck, it'd just mean one side is stuck on 2 bases forever, and you can bet there'll be plenty of lamers capping and vulching those 2 bases.
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I've been thinking about going over to the Rooks actually.
I used to think the numbers was just a temporary thing, and it would even out on its own eventually. It doesn't seem like it has. I spend most of my time fighting Bishops, because it is to hard to find a fight against Rooks usually.
I don't see how HTC can solve it though, without assigning players and squads to countries, and I don't think that would work very well.
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Pre-tour registration!
* Enlist for a country just before the end of the tour
* You cannot change countries once enlisted
* Squads enlist as whole, individuals as individuals
* System will automatically "recommend" people to join the lessers
* Once "recommendation" limit is exceeded, people will be unable to enlist for the largest country
* If only one country is lacking in numbers while the other two are large, all new registrations will be forced to the smallest
* Enlistment will correspond to time zones - ie. the limit for US West users will be determined among the percentage of the people in the same time zone
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I have to say that I actually enjoy being a Rook now more than I did three months ago when the numbers thing wasn't such an issue. I judge a game by how much my guts relax when I stop playing it. Let's just say that lately I take a pretty big breath after logging off. I admit that it is sometimes discouraging to come on and have fields in the single digits and half the players of the next highest team, but otherwise it's enjoyable to fly in a tense and exciting environment. BUT the one thing that really gets under my skin is the taunting and the arrogant condescension from other players both on this BB and on Ch.1. And here (GOD HELP ME) I think Leviathn has a point. So many people are just looking for that push-over reset and they know Rooks isn't going to provide it for them. I guess that's fine insofar I don't have to live in their moronic heads. But you really need to keep your smarmy comments to yourself. Besides, it just makes you look weak and desperate for any "victory" no matter how hollow.
But I'll have to disagree with Leviathn that this won't clear itself up. In fact, we've successfully weeded out the fair-weather fans and the defeatists and slowly a trickle of fighters has come to our ranks. I know of at least a few squads that have come Rook and I them. After all, I think it only fair to say that not every Knight or Bishop is a panty-waist defeatist. So it's only fair to say that some will choose to come to the country where the action is.
And I imagine that those that think Rooks have numbers are judging by the RJO we had a few nights ago when a majority of Rook squad members were online. Keep in mind that during that time, we outnumbered the Bish, but never the Knight. For both of whom it was a regular night. It's also quite telling that when the RJO reached full steam as far as numbers were concerned, the Bish had maybe even numbers or close thereby. As soon as we started rolling over the Bish, their numbers dropped, in the course of an hour or so, to under 50.
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I will go where my squad takes me we have asked and are waiting to hear from them all.
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Seems there is a move away from earlier threads suggesting Rooks bail ship and join Bish/Knits :eek: Good. There was an alternative - FWIW yours truly already enjoys a 2 country war by solely fighting Knits who seem to be the only worthy opponents. Sorry Bish, I don't want to play with you. :D
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Agree with Leviathn... I think for the past 4-5 tours I've been
logging on and looking for the biggest red AND green bar in
one place. As I've checked my stats versus other countries, I've found out I've mainly been fighting the knights this way. From Shane's thread, I usually see the numbers posted by Karnak during late Pacific times. I almost always head towards where the knights are attacking en masse. It's no fun attacking a country with so few numbers, so I basically have been ignoring the rook front. If all I see is sectors with large green and no red, or all red and no green I just leave and do something else. Whatever happened to all the rooks from the beta days? They tended to outnumber everyone?
mauser
Originally posted by Dead Man Flying
....Last night after almost 200 Knights and 140 Bishops reset 80 Rooks on the Pacific map, we moved to the Baltic... where promptly 50 Bishops attacked seven (yes, seven) Rooks who decided to stick around after the reset and 70 or so Knights attacked undefended Bishops bases in the east.
...
-- Todd/Leviathn
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Originally posted by mkuebeler
First, there are the squads who've grown so fat and lazy from riding the gravy train that they can no longer be competitive with more equal numbers, if they ever were at all.
Its not the gravy....its the wings. Oh...and the beer. :D
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Originally posted by mkuebeler
First, there are the squads who've grown so fat and lazy from riding the gravy train that they can no longer be competitive with more equal numbers, if they ever were at all.
Does this Jug make me look fat?
Sakai
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Originally posted by Sakai
Does this Jug make me look fat?
No, I think you're making the Jug look skinny.