Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aces High General Discussion => Topic started by: Zazen13 on August 27, 2003, 06:34:24 PM
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Far be it from me to add yet another whine thread but I am frustrated. Like most I do not have the luxury of playing AH as a full time job. I get home from work, eat, hang with the GF for a while then log on and look for a fight while she watches TV.
At first I thought I was just unlucky then after 3 weeks of repetition the pattern was obvious. Every day night falls and spans from dusk to dawn about 3 hours exactly during prime US playtime (7pm to 10pm central).
While I realize I can turn gamma up and generally fug with my vid card to make the game somewhat playable I think this is a cop out. The simple fact is, this game is about having fun and fighting. Pitch black darkness is not conducive to the 'fun' factor.
I also realize the realism junkies must have darkness at some point to satiate their desire for an immersive environment. But, I beg of you, do what you must to insure this very unpopular aspect of the game does not fall during peak play hours EVERY SINGLE DAY.
Simply put, your average paying customer LOGS OFF during night time out of frustration and apathy. We do not enjoy it, it doesn't make the game more fun, and for alot of people like myself the cycle is stuck so that it occurs during our only time we play (after work and before bed).
Please look into this, turn a dial, flip a switch, change a script whatever just fix it.
Zazen
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Ahh Zazen...
As much as I hate the night as well, the average paying customer does not log off... or the arenas would be empty, or very close to it (just freeb's left)
The players that stay... must be making some adjustments IMO if they are dogfighting in the dark. The tankers and bombers can probably get away without making any adjustments.
I used to play a mod for Quake2 called Gloom I think it was. It was bugs vs humans. As the bugs you relied on stealth and the dark to get close enough to attack... Unfortunately.. gamma and other adjustments brought an abrupt end to the mod. Kinda hard to get close enough to an enemy, that is carrying a ranged weapon, to hittem with a melee attack with no cover and no darkness (though you may have thought you were in the shadows...)
Its unlikely the gamma and brightness adjustments will ever be "locked" by a game. A shame really for online gaming. Why program night when everyone just tunes it out. (ever seen some competition configs for RTCW?)
I say no point to night, get rid of it. I can stand sunrise and sunset though.
SKurj
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TY for closing you whine tags first. second night is fun. but requires alot of SA. i dont log at night i stay and fight. just look for icons. when i first came to AH i didn't log at night i just got into a flak panzer. IMO night is fun. i just look for icons find them and then sneak up from behind and blast em.
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Night is not fun for all or even most. Nuff said. (Factor in the Gamma thing and not only is it not fun, it's pointless).
Get rid of it HTC.
P.S. No offense to whatever amount of work went into making night a reality in the game. Very pretty and extremely well done. However... the game the game gamer goof has once again stepped in to ruin another aspect of a "sim". What little "Fun Factor" night-time ever had is long gone.
Skull... the "whine whiner" bandwagon is over yonder, run fast enough and ya might catch it.
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night sucks
have a separate arena for night... the night arena don force it on daylight fighters
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night would be good if at the onset of it the icon range would drop to maybe 1k
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yeah ina different arena not the MA
night dosnt belong in the MA
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This is one issue that a majority of customers seem to agree on.
I think most of the mature customers understand the complexity of developing and improving this game. They also appreciate that the majority of the whining and nonsense on this BBS deserves no response from HTC.
In the case of most whines, it only takes a little thought to understand the logic of why things are the way they are. Unfortunately, logic breaks down when trying to understand the benefits of night to game play.
I tried to start a logical, calm topic a few months ago to elicit some positive benefits of night. There was not one positive benefit posted for either HTC or the customers.
The responses were always to change gamma, but what's the point of changing video gamma?
-- It can reduce the life of your monitor and some of us have very expensive monitors.
-- It can affect your eyesight and give some people a headache after only a short time of play.
Overall, I think AH is a great product. The only disappointment I have with AH and HTC is the refusal to contribute a response to any of the many night issue topics. When you separate the wheat from the chaff of topics, I think night is wheat.
If HTC believes that night is good (for any reason at all), please just say that it isn't going to change. That is enough and we all can stop wasting our time posting here about it.
Please.
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w3rd
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another 39 posts funked and you will be in Uber BBS dweeb territory
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I think I'll quit and come back under a new handle after 9999. :)
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Since maps reset at unpredictable times, what you describe is just bad luck, I think.
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One solution is to go to the Combat Arena.
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Or, if you like bombers...
...and it's the middle of the cyber-night when you log on, put a formation of B-17s on auto pilot, go eat, take a shower, whatever, and come back 30 minutes later.
Just make sure of 3 things:
1. You are climbing out into an area that is not likely to have enemy interceptors enter it while you're away. This isn't that hard to do, even on the small maps.
2. There are no mountains ahead!
3. Your manifold pressure (throttle) should be set at 92%-95% power, otherwise when your formation goes through the wind layer your drones will slowly drift away and explode.
[But don't be an alt dweeb and go above 29k. That was the max alt for almost all B-17 missions, except for some 30k missions to avoid Zeroes in the Aleutian Islands. Anyway, I digress...]
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MRPLUTO VMF-323 ~Death Rattlers~ MAG-33
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Thanks MrP..now I know why my drones have disappeared when I get back to my computer.:)
I still think night sux though.
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I don't fly at night; AH "night" combat is not at all what it was like. If we're going to have night, make it much more realistic...no enemy icons (only friendly) would be a good place to start.
MRPLUTO
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I'm all for night. But what we have isnt night, it's "dark sky and ground" time.
Even then, night doesnt bug me all that much, it lasts all of 5 minutes. It's the blinding dusk and dawn that goes on for hours that I cant stand.
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we could all vote for the expulsion of night in AH. But even if 90% of tallied votes wanted it removed, I doubt anything would change. As its not the voters who decide ;)
As for night being set at exactly the same time daily, i imagine its just a coincidence, that is more previlant on the big maps that arent so quickly reset. It would seem logical that any/all maps would start at say 600 hours & night would fall approx some 12 hours later, unless of course there was a reset. So if a map doesnt get reset, night would indeed fall same time every day, at least untill a new map is in.
A_Clown
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Yea Clown that would seem to be the case. There was a reset either late last night or early today and night didn't fall until 10pm central thank god.
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If there are no resets, the night takes place 2 hours later each day, due to each 'AH day' lasting 13 hours (0530-1830). I don't know what time the new map is rotated on a Friday, or what the arena time is when it happens, but perhaps that could be staggered a bit so that the first 'night' doesn't always happen at the same time on a Friday night before the first reset takes place?
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Once again, here we are dancing around the symptom in lieu of curing the disease. :D
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night sucks
6:30pm EST US prime time and the sun is going down
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I think I'll quit and come back under a new handle after 9999.:)
which should be next post
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I like night personally. I don't play with my gamma, and I don't have trouble fighting. Sometimes I have trouble finding people to fight, especially if dar happens to be down also.
I'd like to see night fleshed out a lot- changing and/or dropping icons for 'day fighters', and adding dedicated night fighters- there were plenty of them. We could even have several without much modification at all- the Boston was a night fighter, the Mosquito, the Ju88 and the Bf110, the F6F-5N and the F4U (don't remember the varient, but it operated with the Marines and one Navy squadron off of some escort carrier). All of the fighters listed above had radar, so I'd say let them keep icons, and let the 'day fighters' keep dar but no icons. Model stuff like flame from exhaust, landing lights, searchlights, etc. and it could be a totally different experience than flying in the MA during the day.
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Originally posted by Citabria
6:30pm EST US prime time and the sun is going down
6.30 pm Eastern is US prime time? Seems a little early to me..... that's only 5.30 pm Central and 3.30 pm Pacific.... I actually thought when I noticed it getting dark at 11.30 pm my time that at least it would be light again for US prime time, which I would have guessed would be at least a couple of hours later? :)
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I have a cheap monitor whose brightness i have set to 100% even at AH daytime. If i dont want to log off at night because of completely darkness, i must fumble at my vidcards gamma settings.
Imho night only makes sense if HT brings another aspects to the game. i.e. fields which are protected by huge spotlights like it was in reality. And nightfighters....gimme nightfighters.
(http://www.pilotenbunker.de/Nachtjaeger/Luftwaffe/Drewes_Martin/Drewes-Bf110.GIF)
(http://www.wings-of-history.de/wingsofhistory/be-flugz/nj-lw/images/me262.jpg)
(http://people.freenet.de/aircraftworld/DN4.jpg)
Sunset and sunrise are pretty nice and should stay in the game.
Ecke