The debates about gameplay have raged even back in 2001 and I suspect even longer than that. It's been really tiring to see the same ol' stuff be argued ad-naseum. If you don't believe me just do a few searches in the BBS and see. Mostly I get a chuckle out of how zealous folks can get on the topic regardless of which religion they profess.
There is an aspect of the gameplay debate though that has never failed to disturb me and that is how little recognition there is of just how terribly fallible we are as human beings to our own biases and filters and how easily we miss our own blinders.
"...humans are poor at evaluating probability. We tend to see patterns where there aren't, overestimate the probability of low frequency events and, most importantly, have a tendency towards comfirmation bias -- looking for evidence that confirm our preexisting beliefs."With that in mind I thought I would try to demonstrate ways of challenging ourselves to be more objective and intellectually honest about the reality of things. We tend to extrapolate our individual experiences as a given that the majority of folks experience the same things. This is a terribly inaccurate way of sizing up what is happening as a whole.
So let's take a look at how much or how has gameplay changed in the Aces High MA of old etc? Are there some ways to tangibly measure the above available to us? A general proxy could be to look at stats available to the public AH community through the monthly kill stats database. With that as a premise I went and pulled stats from 2001 to 2006. To make it a somewhat reasonable exercise for me timewise I just did snapshots for the months of July and Dec from 2001 to 2006 (July 2001 was the earliest I could find monthly kill stats recorded for AH).
HOW HAS THE MA PLAYER BASE FLUCTUATED AS A WHOLE?===========================================
If we assume that total number of kills (which also equals total deaths) in the MA as a proxy for the total MA player base population what does that tell us about the population?
So how has the MA population changed? From Jul 2001 to Jul 2002 AH experienced a whopping 250% rate of growth. From Jul 2002 onwards until now the rate of growth has essentially leveled off with roughly a +/- 25% change. One of the possible conclusions is that players coming roughly equals the players leaving therefore balancing each other out which is resulting in a plateau in growth for AH over the last 4 years.
Folks who believe that a controversial change will be the death knell of HTC should take note of this because in those 4 years there have been some big changes with the AH2 and the ENY limiter system happening in that span yet there is no evidence that those changes adversely impacted their business if these stats are representative of total HTC player base subscription.
Let's take a look at some other stats. The following are stats based on essentially the top 30 models in AH in terms of kills % and deaths %. I arbitrarily cut it off at the top 30 to keep the graphs and tables somewhat readable. It's also important to note that the top 30 make up about 80-85% of the total kills and deaths in the old MA. There are 86 model types available in the planeset and vehicle set in AH. Someone has already pointed this out recently (sorry I can't remember who it was that posted the stats!) but it's worth repeating.
That means 1/3 of the planeset and vehicle set in AH account for 80-85% of the kills/deaths in the MA while the other 2/3 account for the last 15-20% (which is a noteworthy stat).HOW HAS THE PLANESET AND VEHICHLE SET USAGE CHANGED IN THE MA?===========================================
One way we might extrapolate this is to look at distribution of % of total kills or deaths among planes and vehicles. The following charts are the top 30 models sorted in order of average % of total kills or deaths.
This is a pretty revealing set of tables and graphs that reveal some fundamental shifts in model usage in AH which are bit surprising. Several of the significant global trends stick out.
(1) By far the greatest increase in usage is the Panzer IV compared to all other models of planes and aircraft.
(2) The Spitfire XVI quickly replaced the usage of Spitfire V’s and Spitfire IX’s.
This would indicate that of all the gameplay changes in AH, the one that has been significant is that of the increase in the GV battles.
2ndly, the data appears to indicate that overall the other aspects of gameplay in terms of plane and vehicle usage hasn’t dramatically shifted and suggests that the idea that a significant increase or decrease in furballing or base capturing just isn’t reality over the course the AH history since 2001. If they did, I would expect to see things like a drop in the use of N1K’s, a rise in the use of B-17’s, etc. etc.
All that being said these charts might not tell us the whole story because it is hard to gauge the volatility in kills and deaths of models given the scale being examined above. The numbers represent % of the total so it’s harder to understand what a .5 % change for a model is for instance.
Another way to get a better sense of the volatility and trends in planeset and vehicle-set usage is to look at specific model and to understand the % above or below the median the kill and deaths fluctuate. In other words if I take a specific plane and look at the median % of total kills or deaths in the MA, the amount of flunctuation above or below the median for that plane will tell me how much change that plane has experienced relative to it’s own usage.
Here are the tables and graphs:
Note that the median min and max volatility % for the top 30 models are:
- for kills: -50% and +33% respectively
- for deaths: -39% and +33% respectively
These tables give us a better idea of how much volatility each of the top 30 killers or death models experienced from 2001-2006. The obvious ones from the previous charts stickout such as the Panzer IV, Spit IX, and Spit V changes.
Some other ones that we now see that have experienced noticeable changes are (fluctuations above and below the overall top 30 min/max medians).
(1) drop in P-51D usage
(2) drop in P-38L usage
(3) rise in bF110G-2 usage
(4) rise in Hurri II C usage
(5) drop in bF-109K4 usage
(6) drop in P-47D-40 usage
(7) drop in F6F-5 usage
(8) drop in B-17 usage
(9) crop in c-47 usage
Everything else with a few exceptions seems to have remained fairly steady over the course of time in AH.
Anyway, these are but some stats that might bring some rationality to the gameplay discussion. Overall what I'm struck with is..
(1) how significant the ground war is growing in AH
(2) the slow reduction in diversity of aircraft usage in AH
What I don't see evidence of is that "furballing" is diminishing - but rather the diversity of the types of planes engaged in a furball are, nor do I see the base capture / strat gameplay increasing.
It'll be interesting to revisit this topic over time with the new arena settings.
Tango, XO
412th FS Braunco Mustangs
