Arena Balance

[Edbert]

Nothing can be done to avoid complaints, since anything that fixes the imbalance will restrict folks from joining the side they want, which for most players is whatever side is pummeling it's foes with the bigger numbers at that time.

Only fair way to do it is have the host autoassign you to a side when you select the arena....
1.) No chesspeice will be marked as "joinable" if it has more than 1 or 2% higher number of players.
2.) If the arena you choose is full of whatever chesspeice you want you'll get a popup asking if you want to join the lower numbered side of same arena or try to join your favorite chesspeice in another arena. So if your first choice is not allowed you will have 5 other arenas and two other chesspeices to try, no way to say you have no choices anymore.

I can hear the crying already, but the game needs to be balanced if we want it to last.

[Laurie]

Originally posted by LYNX
Fair play....You would like folks to switch sides to balance the arena.  ?

Fair play....You would expect folks to stay on their side instead of bailing to another arena

Fair play ...You want me to switch sides to make up for the quitters. ?

Fair play....2 LW arena's promotes arena quitters leading to side imbalance.

Look! Two late war arena PROMOTES side imbalance a couple of way.  If side "Z"  is taking a hammering in 1 arena side "Z" will be doing the hammering in the other arena.  

Folks being hammered in 1 arena bail to the other arena which in turn widens the imbalance.  1 arena dominated by side "Z" and the other arena by side "X".

Some are even switching sides the wrong way

You can just check rosters and follow them around.....

yet you want me to switch sides because of arena quitters.

Well, I pays to play for rooks.  I pays to play to use all the plane/vehicles. I pays to play to be able to switch from spit 16 to p47 to lancs to tigers in the same arena.  Equally I pay not to be hoarded or do the hoarding.   I have been logging off.  I'd rather log than be USED to fill in for a quitter.

FAIR PLAY.... with 2 late war arenas.  You gotta be out your tree mate.  The argument don't stand up.  

You give these guys the opportunity to go to another FULL PLANE SET arena and they go.

 Over all the 3 sides have near enough equal numbers....OVER ALL.  Yet Bish are favouring LWb while rooks favour LWo.  Poor old Knights numbers spread thin in all both arena.

Your argument would stand on merit if there was just 1 LW arena but there are 2.

Either make it 1 LW arena or deny access or place the player.

I'll make you this promise "I ain't switching to stand in for arena quitters".

 alleluiah!

[FrodeMk3]

Originally posted by Edbert
Nothing can be done to avoid complaints, since anything that fixes the imbalance will restrict folks from joining the side they want, which for most players is whatever side is pummeling it's foes with the bigger numbers at that time.

Only fair way to do it is have the host autoassign you to a side when you select the arena....
1.) No chesspeice will be marked as "joinable" if it has more than 1 or 2% higher number of players.
2.) If the arena you choose is full of whatever chesspeice you want you'll get a popup asking if you want to join the lower numbered side of same arena or try to join your favorite chesspeice in another arena. So if your first choice is not allowed you will have 5 other arenas and two other chesspeices to try, no way to say you have no choices anymore.

I can hear the crying already, but the game needs to be balanced if we want it to last.

I don't know, Ed. I know that you and JAXXO and lasz and Hubs don't mind flying against each other...but asking just about anybody else in this game to fly against their squaddies, might have almost disastrous consequences.
And that's what autoassign will do.

[BlauK]

4. Combine ENY and PERK approaches so that the more numerous countries start paying perks even of the normally free planes!
Additionally, don't prohibit available planes with ENY, but make them cost even more PERKs.

[BaldEagl]

This would work in the new orange arena.  If one countries got the same #'s as the other 2 combined don't let them attack anything.  Just let them defend.  That will balance it out quick enough.

[Platano]

Ummm I 4got as to the reason why 2 late-war arenas were implemented

[Simaril]

Originally posted by Platano
Ummm I 4got as to the reason why 2 late-war arenas were implemented

HT's analysis of measurable indicators (subscription retentions, feedback from non-renwers, etc) showed that the large arena was not healthy, from a business standpoint and from a gameplay standpoint.



Whether the vocal minority likes it or not, large arenas are gone. According to HT (Mr. "I Dream of 500 arenas with 300 people in each"), they're gone forever.

[hubsonfire]

Originally posted by LYNX
Fair play....You would like folks to switch sides to balance the arena.  ?

Fair play....You would expect folks to stay on their side instead of bailing to another arena

Fair play ...You want me to switch sides to make up for the quitters. ?

Fair play....2 LW arena's promotes arena quitters leading to side imbalance.

Look! Two late war arena PROMOTES side imbalance a couple of way.  If side "Z"  is taking a hammering in 1 arena side "Z" will be doing the hammering in the other arena.  

Folks being hammered in 1 arena bail to the other arena which in turn widens the imbalance.  1 arena dominated by side "Z" and the other arena by side "X".

Some are even switching sides the wrong way

You can just check rosters and follow them around.....

yet you want me to switch sides because of arena quitters.

Well, I pays to play for rooks.  I pays to play to use all the plane/vehicles. I pays to play to be able to switch from spit 16 to p47 to lancs to tigers in the same arena.  Equally I pay not to be hoarded or do the hoarding.   I have been logging off.  I'd rather log than be USED to fill in for a quitter.

FAIR PLAY.... with 2 late war arenas.  You gotta be out your tree mate.  The argument don't stand up.  

You give these guys the opportunity to go to another FULL PLANE SET arena and they go.

 Over all the 3 sides have near enough equal numbers....OVER ALL.  Yet Bish are favouring LWb while rooks favour LWo.  Poor old Knights numbers spread thin in all both arena.

Your argument would stand on merit if there was just 1 LW arena but there are 2.

Either make it 1 LW arena or deny access or place the player.

I'll make you this promise "I ain't switching to stand in for arena quitters".

Thank you, Lynx. A perfect example of the mindset that led to this situation in the first place. Now be still.

[Simaril]

Lynx --

I see a different interpretation of the same info. You noticed how some people switch sides "the wrong way" -- but I think you completely misunderstand WHY.   It's not lack of loyalty, its not a love affair with the La-7. It's because a significnat number of players like having a big number advantage.

The old MA was hardly ever the perfectly balanced haven you imply we'd see, if only HT would agree with you and return to a single arena. When we had only one arena, the Nits had been low side for 4-5 months, consistently, and with a meaningful imbalance.

These hide-in-a-crowd fliers used to log off or switch countries "the wrong way", but now they stay on and just move to an arena that meets their needs.



PS --
I had to chuckle at your patriotic (and self righteous) "I PAY TO FLY FOR ROOKS" though....If that's the case, why ever did you send money to HT for all the years you flew for Bish?


 

[WMLute]

Originally posted by hitech
2. Write the cant fly in this arena unless you changes sides.

Sorry for getting off-topic in the other test capture system thread.  I ALMOST started a new thread but I was in a rush, and the idea came to me when reading THAT thread.

So do/did you like my suggestion?  I really think it is viable.

(recap as it was deleted)

If you try to log into an arena and your country has high #'s (or based on a certain ENY #) you get the message

"Your country is full in this arena.  Would you like to fly for the (insert lowest #'s side here)"

1. It would help balance out the sides, as the lowest #'d country would get pilots.

2. The players still have choices.  They can choose to fly in that arena for the lowest population country.  OR they can go to the other LW, MW, EW arena.

By constantly feeding the lowest #'s country, it would help to balance out the arenas.  MIGHT also consider codein' that you can't switch to a country if it has a certain ENY level.

[Edbert]

That idea sounds good to me Lute, pretty much what I posted here earlier. But I'm becoming cynical lately, it occured to me that since the majority of the subscribers prefer imbalance and prefer fighting team-mates for scraps over fighting for their (virtual) life...we'll see the dedicated (insert your most hated chesspeice here, lol) joining the other side and sitting in the tower so their buds can roll terrain without having to fight as much.

I keep coming back to the fact that the core problem with imbalance (nay, 99% of the gripes you see on BBS and ch200) are the result of the playerbase gaming-the-game in some way to win without taking chances. Until we can tweak and upgrade the players we'll be chasing the proverbial trail by trying to bring fairness.

I can't help but feel all the changes HTC is experimenting with to make us play fair are simply because we behave like children, I take no issue at all with their changes designed to bring fairness to the game and acheive the "level playing field" concept.

[pluck]

vote for #2, as for the same reasons as other.  number 1 might be affective, but i bet few would like to join an arena and then sit in the tower waiting.  

#2 is good, if a squad wants to fly together so badly, then they can all just move to the lowest number country.  so i guess that takes care of the "i can't fly with my squad/friends" argument.

the problem with #2 from what i would assume lynx may have been getting at, is that if one country is losing with fair numbers, and many just log off, then the imbalance is created by the losers quitting.  but with #2 the winning country could still retain its numbers, but could not get any extra numbers.....why would they need it anyway?

#3 though i'm sure is easier, would lead to everyone complaining.  looking through the past years, someone was always complaining about their country being outnumbered....and it's happened to them all for significant time periods.  eventually we will have just one overwhelming horde demolishing everything in its path.  no challenge, no gameplay, just huge numbers of people vulching/fighting 4 v 1, and bombing buildings all day.  

your game, i won't be the one telling you how to run it:)  i think we all appreciate the amount of time and effort you and the AH team has put into this game and the effort to make it even better.  after reading the message boards and seeing some of the things i've seen, i'm sure there must be days when you feel like saying "ahhhhhhh f it."

[Overlag]

Originally posted by hitech
Currently having 2 different thoughts.

1 Go back to my original idea of having a wait time between flights based on country balance. This would put the same numbers in the air at one time.

2. Write the cant fly in this arena unless you changes sides.

3. Say screw it, turn off ENY and let everyone complain.

arena balance idea that i came up with a rather rubbish edit in MSpaint:



this way the server "browser" can be setup to limit side advantages to... lets say 10%. and also, with the country numbers displayed on the server page, people will know which one to join to even the numbers up...

you could also display the map name on the server too.... since certain maps bring in more numbers (like TT map in MW bringing in 300 players when its normaly 80ish)

im not sure if all this extra information getting polled to bring it up on the server browser would cause issues.... as ive heard you dont want the auto refresh of numbers due to constantly pinging the server.... so im just wondering if asking the server for all this info (side balance, current map) might cause issues or is it something that will take forever to code correctly?

also.... with tod coming soon, is that going to be one "server" you join, or many little ones? because the sort of info desplayed on the MA's could be useful for the tod servers also.

Originally posted by WMLute
Sorry for getting off-topic in the other test capture system thread.  I ALMOST started a new thread but I was in a rush, and the idea came to me when reading THAT thread.

So do/did you like my suggestion?  I really think it is viable.

(recap as it was deleted)

If you try to log into an arena and your country has high #'s (or based on a certain ENY #) you get the message

"Your country is full in this arena.  Would you like to fly for the (insert lowest #'s side here)"

1. It would help balance out the sides, as the lowest #'d country would get pilots.

2. The players still have choices.  They can choose to fly in that arena for the lowest population country.  OR they can go to the other LW, MW, EW arena.

By constantly feeding the lowest #'s country, it would help to balance out the arenas.  MIGHT also consider codein' that you can't switch to a country if it has a certain ENY level.

cool idea.



edit: didnt relise slap posted it on page 1 lol

[killnu]

how bout a limit on number of planes that can up from a base?  say 30 planes from a base...anymore than that must up from different base?  number is arbitrary and should prolly change...but you get the point.

very late AW style I suppose.

[Overlag]

Originally posted by killnu
how bout a limit on number of planes that can up from a base?  say 30 planes from a base...anymore than that must up from different base?  number is arbitrary and should prolly change...but you get the point.

very late AW style I suppose.

thing is, we've been forced to all up at the same base now (basically) so that wont work.....

but yes, that idea would be been cool... design a supply/blueline system that allows the server to know what is a front line base and what is not.

these front line bases (depending on how many) can only up a certain amount of fighter planes.

1: If a country wants local air superiority they have to up from 2nd/3rd line bases.

2: Heavy Bombers would NOT be allowed to up from front line bases (to reduce suicide dive bombing)

the system could also account for a bases position... so lets say its got 3 enemy bases next to it, it can up more planes. if it only has 1 it can only up a few



that sort of idea would be better than a forced road of war.