New idea what do you ladies and gentlemen think.

[Mugzeee]

Originally posted by hitech
So far my thoughts on alternatives of perks or plane limitation , is that I realy doubt they would motivate people to change sides.

Right now it should be obvious that the perk multiply has almost no effect, implementing somthing similar as sugested might triple the effect but it would still have almost no effect. So what we would be left with, is more complaining, but the problem would still remain.

The other problem I see with limiting the top used planes, is that the numbers advantage would still greatly out wiegh  the plane type advantage. In fact the lesser used planes like the p47 start to realy shine when you have a numbers advantage.

I also do not buy into the argument that it would be limiting in any way, all it would be is the big sides choice to wait to fly or to change sides. Thats a choice to make, not a limit.

I have no doubt that the time limit with the right settings would balance the fight, regardless if people changed sides.


And a big thanks for keeping this discussion fairly civil so far.


HiTech

Your right sir. [size=huge]The "Perk" solution has not and will not work.[/size] It has played out. And the results are the proof.

[Scherf]

Top of my head (haven't read other posts), I don't like the idea of time limits between flights. Would be more of a pain in the arse than flying against numbers - I'd likely log and start playing IL-2 offline, not what HTC wants I imagine.

Again off the top of my head, I think updating perkage would be a better idea. Both in terms of  the multiplier for side numbers, and in terms of the cost of a lot of the standard aircraft. Make flying a lala in a crowd a risky proposition, and I think you'd see less of it.

Just my $.02.

Now let's talk about this clear, shameless Axis Bias (TM).

Cheers,

Scherf

[Xargos]

What's the point in paying for a game if I can NOT play.  I enjoy the company of the people I fly with.  If I can NOT fly with the people I want to then again why should I pay for a game I can NOT enjoy.

[Murdr]

Regarding the Zone discussion (Zone limitations originally of AW due to network/server limitations)  Dont forget that there is a variety of MA maps.  

If slots were based on planes upping from a field, I think I would be ticked off about the effects of that.  If I were on the low numbered side, I would never be able to get a high enough alt.  The portion of the horde that couldnt get a slot at the near field would be comming in even higher, and imo there is already enough 25K alt monkeys orbiting the horde.

If slots were based on strat zones, it would be cool...until your country happens to be boxed into one zone, then what?  If my memory is correct the small maps only have one strat zone per country.

[Simaril]

I have one major problem with the idea, and I don't think its been addressed so far.

(To be honest I didnt read all posts all the way thru to see for sure -- this thread's gotten a lot of action really fast. So, forgive if it has been covered.)

HiTech, this solution hits hardest against those causing the least gameplay impact --  the less skilled players. Intermediate players die A LOT more often than the vets, but we are also less effective when we fly. So, we would be more likely to be impacted by the delay.

Importantly, we also have a less developed network of relationships. Jumping to other countries means we have to start all over getting to know people. We are much more likely to stick out the discouraging times -- and become profitable long term players -- if we have friends on the team. If we have to jump to another country to take off, an indirect effect could be a greater chance of giving up the game.

Meanwhile, the players who do the most to make to it hard to fly outnumbered have relatively less penalty, because they get more air time per sortie, fewer sorties per hour, and because they get more kills per anything.

More vets in the air; and, longer waits for the frequently dead less skilled players. So, the gameplay impact for any given hour will be TO INCREASE the lethality of the outnumbered side's opponents. .In the short term, then, the effect would be to WORSEN the gameplay imbalance.

If this is the approach you want to take, i would strongly recommend that the effect be applied based on large timeframes -- like Country sorties per week or active players per month.

That way the pressure is applied consistantly, predictably, and --most importantly -- it would be apllied in a way that would encourage entire social units (squads) to switch together for a long haul.

However, i'd like it better if a different solution were found. My squad friendhips have at times been the only thing keeping me form giving up the struggle to get better, and I suspect I'm not alone.

[Mugzeee]

Originally posted by Arlo

P.S. "The race to reset" promotes countries ganging on the lesser side. If there was no "win", you'd see less of that.

Couldnt agree more.
But it doesnt change to Security in numbers syndrome. Some guys just like to Hoard.. Its a simple fact.
The simple fact that we have Ranking, Score, and the SYSTEM LANDED ###KILLS will always keep some players doing what ever it takes to aid their lack of skill and in some cases even some good players...more than we care to think. And i dont mean that in a bad way. If you are a player that is new or not very good...You are likely to seek the comfort of flying in situations that offord more Green than Red. But i think very FEW would want Scores droped..SYSTEM Messages removed and such.

[Jasta]

My idea:

instead of an individual time frame for each pilot, how about a spawn timer system similar to that found in BF1942/RTCW. Keep a constant timer running, however long it may be.

For Example:

the timer is set to 4 minutes once numbers get to that out-of-hand stage... If a guy on the OOC team gets killed 1 minute into the timer, he has to wait 3 minutes to up again. Likewise, if its your own good luck to get killed 30 seconds from the spawn time, you get to up in 30. That way SQUAD EVENTS CAN STILL BE PERFECTLY COORDINATED, and you provide an incentive for people to stay on the same team. Also make the timer hidden so people dont try to beat the system.

If someone starts a mission, then the mission would simply reflect how many timer cycles until the mission, instead of a set number of minutes.

i think it could work!

[Urchin]

"The other problem I see with limiting the top used planes, is that the numbers advantage would still greatly out wiegh the plane type advantage. In fact the lesser used planes like the p47 start to realy shine when you have a numbers advantage"

I missed this before.  Actually, limiting the Spit9/Nik/La7/P51 (and presumably the Ki-84 when we get it) might have a drastic effect.  The lesser used planes only shine in situations where they have overwhelming numbers because there are still an equal or greater number of "allies" flying the above to mask any performance deficits the P47, etc. has when flying against enemy Big 5 planes.

A "horde" of P47s facing half their number in La7s would probably get roughed up very quickly indeed.

[ghostdancer]

Now without the info I am little leery of the solution not for the reason some might think.

There has been a definite hit in player numbers and activity do the AH2 switch over. If you use the current stats page to compare countries .. you can argue over many things but the levels of deaths and kills per country is roughly back where was back in Sept/Oct. 2002.

We have lost a lot of people. Or a lot of people are not flying as much. And that goes for more than the MA .. the events in the SEA are definitely also down on numbers (by about 22%-30% in Squad Ops over what they were).

As already brought up what you have to figure out here is how likely is a person to change countries, wait to fly for his country (for those who are dedicated to a country), or log. You have to come up with a time limit that will not encourage more people to log off than wait. I don't think you will encourage many people at all (not the dedicated squads) to switch countries and abandon their fellows or squads mates just to be able to fly with no time limit.

Therefore if you do put this in place you need to put something in that strikes the right balance. If you do 15 minutes you might be causing a lot of people to log. Once you start encouraging your customer base not to fly play you start making them look for others things to do.

5 Minutes might be better .. a penalty and enough a delay to help the defenders regroup and prepare for the next wave but not enough to cause people to log instead of flying.

I personally don't and haven't bought into the beliefe the massive amounts of people switch between countries on a regular basis.

I took a day to try to check country affiliation and squad information back 7/26/04 and this is how things stood then.

So did some research:


http://www.dgideon.org/aceshigh/master-list-of-squads.xls

There are 491 registered squads of which 341 are actively flying in Camp 54. Of these squads there are two types of squads .. dedicated who only fly for their country and primary who mainly fly for one country but also fly a bit for other countries. Here is the break down of the squads:


82 - Bishop Dedicated - 24.0%
8 - Bishop Primary - 2.3%
96 - Knight Dedicated - 28.2%
16 - Knights Primary - 4.7%
91 - Rook Dedicated - 26.7%
31 - Rook Primary - 9.1%

As you see there are 269 squads that fly just for one country and don't fly at all for any other country; That is 78.9%.

Only 55 squads have pilots who will fly more than one country during a camp and even then those squads tend to fly more than 50% of the time for just one country. So this idea would nudge these squads. But the effect on the others is going to come down to wait or log.

Now the next interesting thing is the possible pilot pool that a country can field from these squads. These are the pilot numbers of the squads that could fly (does not reflect the amount they fly or frequency).

970 - Bishop Dedicated - 25.0%
86 - Bishop Primary - 2.2%
1040 - Knight Dedicated - 26.8%
199 - Knights Primary - 5.1%
1195 - Rook Dedicated - 30.8%
390 - Rook Primary - 10.1%

3205 pilots only fly for one country out of 3880 .. or 82.6%. Meaning as much as people here post and discuss actually the majority of pilots of all countries fly just for their country. But do note, currently have no way of tracking pilots not in squads.

So once again I don't think any programming solution at all is going to cause a mass change and cause people to start switching countries just to fly with no delay since most are dedicated to flying with their squad and their buds, and some to a country. It will cause more of the primaries squads to switch and cause some dedicated squads to move into the category of primary. But I don't see a mass conversions.

So that leaves the option to wait or log. As I said its all going to come down to the amount of the wait. Too much and people log and you start training your customer base not to play your game and go else where. Coupled with lower perk point costs for certain planes and this could have interesting and unforseen consequences.

To short and their is no impact to blunt the edge of overwhelming numbers.

Very tough rope to walk.

[ghostdancer]

What about the old AW idea of only lowing a certain number of planes to up from a base? One that number of planes have upped from a specific base no more can up until a person lands or dies who spawned from that base.

Forcing others to instead up from adjacent bases that have not maxed out. Possibly result of spreading out the large numbers in both time and space.

[NUTTZ]

IMHO, this would be a bad Idea.

Example:squad night/or mission, designing a mission or squad op, probably would always leave someone on the tarmac, randomly. The squad/mission would NEVER know ( until airborne ) who was "left behind". Given this senerio WHAT if it was a base capture and all the goonies were "left behind" on a "timeout"? You would have some really PO'ed players. Now this leaves us with still the imbalance problem and where to attack it.

Lets see we have,
Planes. (either limiting a certain plane or fuel,ammo)
(insert whines here)

object hardness. ( raise or lower according to number strenght) You would need someway of letting the players know the Hardness settings are changed and what too)

Dar. ( stronger side losses dar? weaker side and it cannot "go down"?) wouldn't change the numbers but would help the underdog. could Dar range be changed for each country? As the numbers increase the Dar gets shorter legs?

Feild repair. ( time for repairs, quicker for underdog, longer for "stronger side", this could work as a slider % for each team according to number %)

Or go off the board and use HiTech's "time" or plane in the air limit. ( I think this is alittle drastic at this time )

Or use a combination of all! So each thing would have a much smaller effect, an effect but spread out between a number of "resistances not Just one.
( So, HiTech gets a whole lotta little whines, instead of a few really BIG ONES!)

what we need is a tension effect, more resistance to the team with higher numbers, but where do we apply the resistance?

NUTTZ

[Arlo]

With or without the idea implementation, I like the idea of having a second arena where the disgusted can go when the current situation in the MA seems too much. I dunno. Maybe one with 2 sides and historical planesets.

[ghostdancer]

Originally posted by hitech
So far my thoughts on alternatives of perks or plane limitation , is that I realy doubt they would motivate people to change sides.

If the perk system was put in place (by this I mean the lowering of price of perk rides as a country gets out numbered) was mean to encourage people to switch countries, your right didn't work.

I don't think any programming solution is really going to achieve this.

I do think the perk system has made it possible for the out number country to fight the larger country to a stand still as the Knights have been doing with perked planes hunting goons, taking out barracks, and doing small targeted fighters sweeps aimed out destroying the cohesion of the attacking horde.

I think that winning perks for the a reset can be done away with. I think the goal of resetting a country is enough and just like in real WWII there was not combat in the air for just combat sake but to support the effort of combined arms and taking territory from the enemy. Even Battle of Britain stemmed from the Germans wanting to gain air superiority so that they could launch their invasion. So I think no matter what most of the player based will still strive to advance their front against the other country and beat them.

I also think that their are culturally difference between the countries just like between squads. And to some extent these differences attract and dissuade people from flying for a specific country along with other reasons or combined with other reasons.

[Simaril]

Perks motivate very few people, I suspect. Those with skills to really benefit from the advantaged planes have perks to burn; people like me figure that it's smarter to die in a less expensive plane.  I bet not many people change behavior based on perks.


How about that DAR idea? Helps the outnumbered side, and gives incentive to switch.

How about simply appealing to the "good of the order" for a few squads? Some of these guys who played airwarrior when it first opened probably know everybody anyway, and might be willing to move if HT requested that several squads violunteer to go over. Might also spread the "get organized" ethic to other countries; from what I've read, it seems only the rooks have organized Joint Squad ops. (COurse, if I'm wrong, I'm sure somebody will correct me.)

Although numbers imnbalance is no fun, doesnt seem right to penalize the group that routinely organizes itself.....and to be honest, that organization is partly why the honchos moved my squad to rook 5 mos ago.....

[FT_Animal]

Originally posted by hitech
To begin with I think side imbalencing has not been that much of a problem over the years. Only on a few occasions has things gotten out of wack.

But there have been times when the numbers have gotten far out of wack.  We typicly resist any change that forces people to different sides.We typicly are more inclined to giving incentives to changing sides to the lower number country, but so far it has not been a strong enough force to always keep the sides  close to balance.


Our current thought is that a country with substantialy more numbers, say in the realm of 20% more will have a time limit imposed between flights. This time would vary with the side balance.

This would have a few effects.

1. No one realy wants to wait to fly another fight, wrather than wait some will either change sides, or log off. Either has the effect of balancing the numbers.

2. The wait time will also have the effect of fewer people acctualy in the air at one time. Hence also balancing the fighting numbers.


Your thoughts?


HiTech

How about actually well thought out war plans to show brains is better then numbers. You don't need numbers to pound the snot out of a country exploded with population. We did it to the over populated C-Land in AW many times. There's more satisfaction in whupping  huge numbers with smaller force, just better thinking. After a while the sides seemed to balance off more. Then when everyone saw how much ars B-Land was doing with smaller numbers it drew people to that side. They wanted to be a part of killer raids, not loser sniveling. Sometimes you just have to work for the change, force it to happen without COD help. THINK!!! It's turned from a game into a war, let the war evolve/progress. When they get tired of cryin they can start fighting there way out of it, like they should have already been doing.

Also instead of not giving points to idiots with wings, how about 6-10 minute wait periods as penalties for severe dweebleness? I'm serious, if someone has to wait 6-10 minutes for being a dork, maybe they'd think twice. If they only had one life they would fly totally different. Since the one life thing don't work penalize them with wait times. I personally, would not even entertain the thought of suicide bombings if I knew I had to wait 10 minutes.

Morons really chase people away, prolly more so then any bugs.

2 cents,..... will cost ya a buck  ;-)

Anim