HT and Pyro Answer Questions About Planeset and Multiple Arenas

[funkedup]

DF (Dogfighter.com): You announced Aces High and have released an Alpha version to some testers. You said the initial planeset in the game is going to be based roughly around 1943-44 with the P-51D, Me-109G, etc. What was the main purpose for focusing on this era?

DB (Pyro): Well, it's not set in stone, but that era is where a lot of the planes that people expect to see are going to be. The P-51s, P-47s, FWs, stuff like that. If you start out really early in the war you're going to limit yourself. We want to give what most people expect and then throw in a few things that are out of the norm to give it a little more flavor and try to stay in that era where all the planes are fairly competitive. Then as we go on we can keep expanding it out in both directions.

DF: Any idea at this point about your arena makeup compared to something like Confirmed Kill's smaller, private arenas, or WarBirds and Air Warrior's larger public arenas?

DA (Hitech): It's gonna be similar to WarBirds and Air Warrior. It will be the same type of permanent arena. What happens down the road about terrains and how many people we put in each arena is all to be determined.

DF: Are you going to stay with arbitrary countries or have a historical axis vs allies setup.

DA: We'll just do generic countries.

DA: Down the road it depends on how large the player base gets. Until you have a large enough player base to give you more options you're kind of limited to what they want. A lot of people claim to want a more historical matchup deal, but when you look at where the people really go it doesn't work out that way. The minute you go into a two-sided historical matchup you run into some huge game balance issues. When you have different plane sets with different countries, where one is obviously a superior airplane, it just doesn't work for a permanent arena.

DB: It really makes expanding the plane set difficult. Those types of arenas are good for short periods, but when you're talking about 24-hour a day, 7-days a week arenas, any small imbalances become really big factors.

DA: If we can grow a large enough player base then we'll have the options to open up different types of arenas and experiment with rolling plane sets. We'll have to play it by ear. The difficult thing about not having it equal is that players want us to do something to make it equal out. Then they'll come back later and say, well we want some planes on this side and some on the other and so it makes it unequal again.

http://www.dogfighter.com/interviews/show.php3?interview=933470985

Check out the date on that interview.  

[Creamo]

A lot of people think they want the game to work like a real war. Well, in a real war, it's rarely fair. Typically one side gets beat down to where they surrender or don't want to fight anymore and yet have to. You don't really want to create that situation in this persistent war that's going on. You always want to have the sides able to put up some resistance. DB

[funkedup]

Yep, great interview.