Combat Tour on Main Arena - some ideas

[hitech]

It's hard to say what was planning under the original CT (it was a big secret). I suppose they planned to make special arena something like AvA arena but filled with drones manned by AI where people will fly historical missions together with or against drones gaining ranks etc.

The CT design was never secret. It encompassed 3 main components.

1. Is the RPG aspect in that your character would advance his skills.
2. Was the idea that there would be not be open arena play, all play would be mission based with multiple mission to choose from at any time, each starting at a regular interval, I.E. new missions would start at every at 1:00 1:15 1:30 1:45 ....
3. For every offensive mission there would be a defensive mission of the opposing side. Any spots not filled by players would be filled by AI.

The pieces that stalled CT were 1st the needed aspects of art and coding for the character animation that attaches you to your character. And 2nd the volume of work required to create the volume of missions needed to maintain interest.



HiTech

[jimson]

This tour you had 221 pilots with at least one kill or death so far.

Thanks for that info, better than I thought.


Well then, 100 "hardcore regulars."

[phatzo]

"Rolling plane set" has been tried before in another MMO flight sim, and it didn't work out too well.

and guess what, they are doing it again in an attempt to keep what players they have. 

[jimson]

The CT design was never secret. It encompassed 3 main components.

1. Is the RPG aspect in that your character would advance his skills.
2. Was the idea that there would be not be open arena play, all play would be mission based with multiple mission to choose from at any time, each starting at a regular interval, I.E. new missions would start at every at 1:00 1:15 1:30 1:45 ....
3. For every offensive mission there would be a defensive mission of the opposing side. Any spots not filled by players would be filled by AI.

The pieces that stalled CT were 1st the needed aspects of art and coding for the character animation that attaches you to your character. And 2nd the volume of work required to create the volume of missions needed to maintain interest.
HiTech

Should you ever want to revisit this concept, or test out some aspects of numbers 2 and 3 especially, you might consider farming out that high volume of work to an arena with a team of volunteers.

I happen to know of one.

[guncrasher]

Should you ever want to revisit this concept, or test out some aspects of numbers 2 and 3 especially, you might consider farming out that high volume of work to an arena with a team of volunteers.

I happen to know of one.

2 and 3 are covered by special events.  make it happen everyday people will lose interest.

semp

[hitech]

2 and 3 are covered by special events.  make it happen everyday people will lose interest.

semp

You appear to assume CT was trying to appeal to our existing player base. And while special events are great , They really are not the same as what was designed for CT, how can you play any time you wish in a mission encompassing 100's of planes?

HiTech

[CptTrips]

The pieces that stalled CT were 1st the needed aspects of art and coding for the character animation that attaches you to your character. And 2nd the volume of work required to create the volume of missions needed to maintain interest.

Thats interesting.  I would have assumed that it was convincing AI that would have been the main stumbling block.

The first item I think you could have worked around.  I guess I could see the second item being a problem.

Regards,
Wab

[jimson]

So basically the way it would work is to have a number of mission slots to choose from and any unclaimed ones would be replaced by AI, so the scheduled missions would always launch.

People don't like to fight AI but it would be a mixture of robots and humans and in a lot of cases it would be the less desirable mission slots that would be AI.

For example, a large escorted bombing mission where a lot of the bombers would be AI piloted and the escorts and interceptors would draw more human pilots.

On it's own, it might not be a big draw, but as a part of a system where you had to fly in a certain number of missions to advance your virtual career, I could see it being popular.

Might not be something that could sustain itself 24/7 but run a few days per week, perhaps it could work.

A smaller version of this could be implemented in an existing arena, AvA for example.

Open play could be suspended for all day CT mission style play a couple of times per week, or it could run independent of whatever other activity was going on in the arena.

Any future improvements in AI capability would be icing on the cake.

I still think it's worth pursuing, but possibly on a smaller scale "Combat Tour Lite" if you will.

[-aper-]

The pieces that stalled CT were 1st the needed aspects of art and coding for the character animation that attaches you to your character. And 2nd the volume of work required to create the volume of missions needed to maintain interest.

It sounds little bit strange to me: character animation is not that important for flight sim, should not be one of a main reasons to hold the project, as for the amount of work on missions  - may be our community could do this - people here are very creative and have made lots of excellent maps and skins, so it might be possible to involve them into this project as well.

Anyway CT was planned to be carried out on special arena. How do you like the idea to bring it to the Main Arena the way I suggested before.  The numbers of people playing on MA is decreasing slowly. You might be intrested in bringing new style and new people to it.

[CAP1]

It would be the same for all the CT'ers though.  Let the cream rise to the top.

slime and scum also rise to the top.......so thinking the cream rises is kinda not really accurate.

[Dichotomy]

Politics the world over defined in a succinct manner ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

[Simaril]

<snip>
3. For every offensive mission there would be a defensive mission of the opposing side. Any spots not filled by players would be filled by AI.

The pieces that stalled CT were 1st the needed aspects of art and coding for the character animation that attaches you to your character. And 2nd the volume of work required to create the volume of missions needed to maintain interest.



HiTech

HT -

Hearing that CT completion was not limited by the large mission flight aspects gets me thinking: Is there any possibility of special events having access to the AI and formation flight tools?

I'm imagining a Snapshot or Scenario with large numbers of, say, bombers on one side and interceptors on the other. Players could join whatever side they wanted, and the AI could make up the unfilled balance of numbers. Or, they could fill the skies with drone bombers and let real players try to stop enough to blunt a bomber attack. The mouth waters...

Scenario designers could have a blast with this - relieving HTC of the need to design enough stuff to keep a nonstop CT arena interesting.

[jimson]

HT -

Hearing that CT completion was not limited by the large mission flight aspects gets me thinking: Is there any possibility of special events having access to the AI and formation flight tools?

That seemed to be the plan and I was hoping this would be offered to AvA CM's as well

 

We’re going to pull the CT AI mission system and redevelop it for use by CM’s in scenarios and special events.

Anyway CT was planned to be carried out on special arena. How do you like the idea to bring it to the Main Arena the way I suggested before.  The numbers of people playing on MA is decreasing slowly. You might be intrested in bringing new style and new people to it.

To belabor the point, wouldn't it make more sense to bring this into arenas already set up for a two country immersive style of play?

I think HTC is more concerned with player acquisition and retention than which particular arena people choose to play in.

[rabbidrabbit]

Having tried out World of Tanks, I would say their model is ideally suited to MA Aces High.  A quick breakdown:

Overall model is free to play with premium being a 50% bonus to experience and credits.  It's possible to  play for free but getting premium for about $15 bucks a month makes it much more viable.  Real money = gold which can be converted to credits or free experience.  It costs you credits for ammo and repairs.  Experience is used to buy vehicles and upgrades to them.  Everyone starts out with a low level free tank and as you earn experience you can upgrade it with better engines, parts, weapons etc and eventually open up the tree to better vehicles. As you get higher up in the trees, things get relatively more expensive and a bad run will cost you.  This encourages new people to either pay for a subscription or play for free at a penalty but as your time investment increases, your incentive to pay increase proportionately.  In AH, this would essentially be your "perk" price for a higher end ride thus limiting them.  Of note, the current early war, mid war. late war arenas would be well suited to this model.

[Crythos]

From HTs responses here I stick my neck out and say reading between the lines that the CT idea is not permanently dead, just a long time off resources permitting.

Not sure how quite it would work i guess would have to be seperate arena, I cant see it mixing with the MA as others have said.

I enjoy AH for the teamwork the historical aircraft and the challenge of improving my skills as is. but I also enjoy the challenge of character development vs reward that rpg's bring.

Kill 10 rat rpg's are boring meaningfull pvp brings them to life with the challenge only a human opponent can bring, CT and AH would bring the two together in a fashion that I think would appeal too a wide playerbase.

I like flying more challenging or niche role aircraft, some of you may have seen me furballing a D3 I could up a 16, K4 or an LA and get my name in the text buffer but would get more satisfaction from getting another little plane painted on the side of my cockpit with no publicity, things like that are equally pointless you may say but for me AH is not a shoot em up with highscores and could be so much more.