How do you explain Eve's popularity then? Is it not an open world with many sides, be they corporations, clans, whatever, that has PVP combat as one of, if not the primary game function? Do you mean something like that, where there isn't JUST pvp to do, but other stuff like mining or trading, whatever - to incorporate some other game function into AH to increase popularity? Can you expand/explain more if you have time?
My basic premise is, for one reason or another, open world 'twitch' style PVP only gaming doesn't work. You've got it about right with the other stuff there is to do in EvE, IMO. EvE is also more along the lines of WoW in spaceships, where you simply click to target your target, and another button to fire. It gets more complex, but at the baseline of the game, that's what it boils down to. If you look at WoW, there are open PvP servers, but their numbers are a tiny fraction of the PvE servers. With both games, there's way more to do than just PvP.
The vast majority of the time, people PvE against AIs that are always there, they can always find something PvE to do, where if they had to depend on other players to provide them with opponents they wouldn't always find it. They also wouldn't be able to easily crush them.
I guess what I'm asking is what would you be proposing instead Wiley? IMO some of the largest and most popular games in the net in recent times are player vs player team based games. Look at Counterstrike, still going strong, still the largest $ maker next to Starcraft at live gaming pro events, and in the last decade, still unseated in terms of numbers of players online at one given time playing it. That from a game 15 years old as well, just like here.
Counterstrike is an excellent example. The difference between here and counterstrike and games similar to it, be they CoD, Titanfall, or whatever, is they are on small maps, with equivalent numbers balanced teams. World of Tanks and WT, same deal. Small map, equivalent numbers, vehicles balanced for fairness, simple objectives. WT/WoT is more similar to Counterstrike IMO than it is to this game by far. That is why they're vastly more popular than this, because people can get into instant action, with a somewhat fair fight, and it will be over at a scheduled time, or when the objective is accomplished. Then they can either choose to continue, or log to do something else.
That's what kills this game when a casual gamer is comparing the two. In AH, they log in, and it's completely random what may or may not be going on when they get into the tower. There may be action all over the map, it may be dead. Your side might be all balled up into one merciless horde, or it might be getting horded. You have no control over what situation you are logging into. Your HQ might be down, your strats might be leveled, all completely impossible for you to do anything about it other than resupply.
AH and WT have somewhat comparable gameplay, which to most gamers means "the plane will stall if you get too slow, some planes are faster than others, some planes turn better than others". They're not going to be appreciating the finer details of how aircraft handle. They just want things to feel different going from plane to plane so they have some variety to work tactics with.
Couple that factor with the round-based short objective fair fights, and it's what the vast majority of people want.
A far more similar game to AH is Planetside 2. The main difference is, PS2 has much more focus on infantry and ground combat in general, though it does have aircraft, but it is the same idea as this game. Relatively large maps, 3 countries, countries control territory and can capture bases from other countries as they are able.
When it first came out, lots of full servers, lots of people. Could always find a fight. After a couple/few months (sorry, I have no head for timeframes) numbers gradually fell off. Hording became popular because people discovered it worked. After a few months they had to start consolidating servers. The server I was playing on got merged twice the last time I checked, which basically means 3 servers were merged down to 1 to keep numbers high enough to not be boring. Roughly equivalent to 75% dropoff in players.
Now there were gameplay issues that people didn't like, aircraft had the capacity to REALLY kill a lot of infantry (surprise surprise) and a lot of people whargarbled and left supposedly over that, but at the end of the day, most of the reasons I saw people leaving boiled down to "x is unfair", regardless of what the actual unfair thing might be. Sound familiar?
I haven't logged into PS2 in a long time, but from what I've seen mentioned in passing, it's declined over time very similar to AH, only more rapidly. Probably still chugging along with a relatively hardcore fanbase and a rolling high turnover bunch of casuals. It's F2P.
GTA online is also similar, and you'll notice people really get bored playing the actual open world part of the game. You can run around, kill the other players, get chased by the cops, steal vehicles, and soforth, but it gets old and is unpopular for most people. Way more people do rounds based things like racing, PvP events that are (again) round based with an objective and a short timeframe, and co-op things that are round based with an objective and a short timeframe.
The free roaming part of the game is far from the most popular aspect of the game.
Maybe I'm just not understanding what you're saying is all. If not a side based combat game with a map or "open world", then what else is there for this genre of WW2 combat to do? I don't get it (obviously). Do you mean a non PVP type game would be better for AH? Can you give an example of what you mean, or other game types that you're thinking would better suit the future with AH? I'm interested to hear, and think about those ideas, specifically what current successful non pvp type games you think would benefit things here in the future.
Not entirely sure what 'working' would entail. Most of this game's strong points are things the majority simply aren't interested in. Relatively detailed flight in a 'stick and rudder' game is great for those of us that are looking for it, but we're vastly outnumbered by the people who just want somewhat different flight between planes and arcade physics, and a lot of people who are looking for more detailed flight wind up looking for stuff like DCS which is too far the other way for most AHers. Sorry, 15 minutes for me to warm up and takeoff my plane is fun like a spork vasectomy for me.
Counterstrike in Planes seems to work well for WT/WoT. They've also added in the skinner box "gotta gain new vehicles/ingame money" hook to keep people playing. Notice also that in WT, the Full Realism Battle part of it is relatively dead. Way more people want arcade than sim.
What I think would 'work' would not be a game I would want to play. What I think would work is either to effectively copy WT, or possibly have a game where it's open world, 2 sides. Only one side would be playable by people. The other side would be populated by AI and they would run really good looking missions that looked impressive, but would be relatively easy to defeat.
People would be able to up to defend their side from the evil AI planes which would make big scary looking attempts to capture our bases that were easy to stop, or they could capture an AI base, which would have a constant stream of AIs attempting to stop them. The key here would be to have the AIs appear fearsome, maybe knock a few pieces off your plane, but you'd still almost always win and be able to take their bases and shoot them down trying to take your base.
People would be able to land their kills and damage, and take bases, and get their attaboys, and nobody would feel bad because the other side did something unfair.
Open world, side based PvP means as long as the other side is another group of humans who have little to no restrictions placed on them, they will have the capability to make things unfair for your side at times, and the vast majority of gamers will not stand for that. It is the lack of restrictions on your enemies that makes it unpopular.
Unfortunately for guys like me, that's what I look for in a game most of the time. I like having to make do with whatever I have available to me in a random situation.
I hope wall of text made sense, will explain further if you'd like.
Wiley.
