Snailman's scary graph

[bustr]

A number of my squad mates have participated in the WThndr Alpha\Beta. They are of varying AH skill levels. Their combined 100% opinion is that game is for teeni weenies and xBox junkies. I've spent time in their various blogs and in many cases the bantor is exactly like ours or even more juvenile. With an exception. The newb questions and comments asked on a daily basis about that game would get character assassinations in our forum or in the game. We eat our young here at Aces High with great intolerance and premeditation. While acting like we are in a local sports bar that bans anyone 21 and younger.

WThndr is at it's beginning so every player is valuable to their community. Aces High is 12-13 years in and has an older community set in it's ways. Granted there are some squads who value youth and bend over backwards to accommodate them. Then many squads have an 18 year old minimum for joining. I suspect like mine it's too much hassle controlling the language out of the older members in deference to the problems associated with minors. So we stratify by age and eat our young as a consequence. Or our young in retaliation make their own squads dedicated to using every greifing tactic in the game to make their elders hate them as a badge of honor. The vTards come to mind.

By the way, what happened to them? We adults spent so much time over the last few years bashing them in this forum and in the game to force them to stop irritating us. Now I kind of miss how they at least were willing to keep NOEing bases all night long and providing targets to kill. We adults as a group effort over several years, turned their squad name into a curse word, and figuratively ran them out of the game for having fun playing the game in their own way. We didn't like how they played in "OUR" sand box and ran them out of town. Great way to grow a game community.

We eat our own young in this game to keep our comfort zones intact. When we should be encouraging them to keep playing the game how they see fit and giving us targets to shoot at. Our comfortable, ridged, community inflexibility is creating many of the problems we attempt to diagnose in these posts. If I were a tween to 20s something, I would have problems paying my $14.95 and being treated like dirt by a bunch of inflexible older men in their 30s to 60s.   

I bet as usual, it will take a Hitech outside intervention to move things along with this game, in spite of our collective well polished broad comfort zones and specific dining habits.

[Lusche]

There's a new generation of players AH has to win over, and it's a different generation.

No, not "worse". This is not a "console gamer" bashing. Different. Just as 'we' were different to the generations before, had different interests and knowledge.

Those who grew up in the 60's 70's and early 80's (or maybe in the 19th century, hello Earl! ) had for the most part a genuine interest in and knowledge of WWII aviation before finally ending up on AH. For those, AH and similar games was a dream come true, a way to live the fantasy of being a Spitfire, Lightning or 109 pilot. I'm amongst them, going from books (google 'book' if you don't know what that is), plastic models (dam glue everywhere!) desktop (not computer!) flight sim games to the earliest computer sims.

But this generation is already dying out, not necessarily physically, but as gamers (yes, it's a game after all). Growing older takes it's toll. Interest fades, more responsibilities (family), bills have to be paid.

Like all games, AH needs a constant stream of new players. Young players.
And someone born in 1998 has a totally different history than one in 1968.  WWII is WAAAAAAAY ago. Many other conflicts since them, other weapons and machines. WW2 planes may be as far away to him than Napoleonic cavalry was to my generation. And he has a totally different gaming socialisation than us as well.

For this 'new' player, AH2 is 'just another game' (which, again, it actually is.) He won't come in drooling because he finally will be able to fly a FW 190A-8 (wuts dat?).
It's a game, and he wants to be entertained by it. He probably does not even want to buy an archaic controller called "joystick" to see if he likes this game or not.

And 'we' players, not just HTC, have to keep these differences in mind when dealing with him.

[bj229r]

Heap big huge world-wide recession at end of '08, has been but little recovery, and many who  lost their jobs STILL aren't making near what they were 5 years ago. Half the people on the bbs wouldn't grasp that, as they were still in middle or high school at the time

[Lusche]

Oh great, now I'm creating bustr like walls of texts...     I hope it's at least barely coherent, it's late and I'm tired 

[LCADolby]

Oh great, now I'm creating bustr like walls of texts...   

At least it's not Midway-esc drivel. 

[Oldman731]

There's a new generation of players AH has to win over, and it's a different generation.

No, not "worse". This is not a "console gamer" bashing. Different. Just as 'we' were different to the generations before, had different interests and knowledge.

Those who grew up in the 60's 70's and early 80's (or maybe in the 19th century, hello Earl! ) had for the most part a genuine interest in and knowledge of WWII aviation before finally ending up on AH. For those, AH and similar games was a dream come true, a way to live the fantasy of being a Spitfire, Lightning or 109 pilot. I'm amongst them, going from books (google 'book' if you don't know what that is), plastic models (dam glue everywhere!) desktop (not computer!) flight sim games to the earliest computer sims.

But this generation is already dying out, not necessarily physically, but as gamers (yes, it's a game after all). Growing older takes it's toll. Interest fades, more responsibilities (family), bills have to be paid.

Like all games, AH needs a constant stream of new players. Young players.
And someone born in 1998 has a totally different history than one in 1968.  WWII is WAAAAAAAY ago. Many other conflicts since them, other weapons and machines. WW2 planes may be as far away to him than Napoleonic cavalry was to my generation. And he has a totally different gaming socialisation than us as well.

For this 'new' player, AH2 is 'just another game' (which, again, it actually is.) He won't come in drooling because he finally will be able to fly a FW 190A-8 (wuts dat?).
It's a game, and he wants to be entertained by it. He probably does not even want to buy an archaic controller called "joystick" to see if he likes this game or not.

And 'we' players, not just HTC, have to keep these differences in mind when dealing with him.

I agree with all of this, too.  But I am not sure that the younger players, without the prior interest in WWII aviation, will be willing to put in the time and effort to get good at this.

- oldman

[Lusche]

I agree with all of this, too.  But I am not sure that the younger players, without the prior interest in WWII aviation, will be willing to put in the time and effort to get good at this.

Maybe not in the current form of AH, which may be a hidden point of all my blabber

There is a tendency of very rigid conservatism within us "old" players. "Say NO to change."
Remember when the Gv control system was changed to make it more accessible and in line with today's standards? There were a lot of complaints in the line of "gamey" or "giving in to the Xbox generation", even though a key aspect - the GV gunsights had actually become more realistic than before. Not that I did (and do) like all parts of that changes, but most critizism was way over the top and just a kind of "it's always been this way!" conservatism.

[Babalonian]

It's amazing the irony you can stumble upon when browsing the internet.  

[5PointOh]

You know as I think about Bustrs and Snailmans post, I have to agree, and yes condemn myself for basically "eating the young" and being resistant to change. Next time I log in, I'll be more welcoming and less cranky old 32yo. (Well minus Php or Midway or Who...you know the guy )

[Stampf]

I agree with all of this, too.  But I am not sure that the younger players, without the prior interest in WWII aviation, will be willing to put in the time and effort to get good at this.

- oldman

I agree completely with Lusche's excellent post as well.  And I am that drooling 190 dweeb born in 1967.  However, sadly...I agree with OM too.  My youngest son's (16) friends come by and check me out playing AH.  I can see it in their eyes...and hear it in the comments..."He has to fly to the fight? No spawn points?"  If he wasn't my son he wouldn't know a Focke Wulf from Frankenstein.  None of his peer group do.  It's ancient history to them.  They don't want to hear that the game 'works'...just how fast loud and cool the action is.

Inevitably I'll find them on the console...cruising down main street in a stolen corvette...blowing off the law...whipping out their chrome 45's...shooting up pedestrians, and raping their ho's.  All that in the time it took me to rearm.

[mechanic]

I've been pointing out the error of forcing people to play one set way and bashing the noobs who don't conform for years now 

[Citabria]

the worst part of ah graphics is the sky not the ground.

its one color... blue. and it dosnt get any darker the higher up you go even in low orbit in a 163.

the new planes look amazing.

the current ah2 terrain graphics can be used to make some good looking ground patterns but the sky and the clouds or lack of clouds or clouds clipping the ground and clipping in and out of view is in need of updating.

[bustr]

We have one thing in our favor if we want to make use of it.

The under 27 gamers are willing to try new experiences longer if they feel accepted for giving the new game a go.

Many of the other Internet games are dominated with a pre accepting age population of similar minded gamers. We are asking them to accept the problems for themselves in hanging out with a bunch of bad tempered foul mouthed copies of their older brothers, fathers, uncles, and grand fathers. Kind of like Thanksgiving dinner for 2 hours every night. Then finding the family blog where they all describe in vivid detail what kind of a useless POS kid you are for leaving the dinner table after the 200th insult about your age and guessed at sexual proclivities.

In many cases it's like several hours of learning to ride a bike while their father tells them they are garbage because they can't keep the bike up and smacking them for asking too many questions about how to ride it. And then when they finally get some feel for keeping the bike going straight, dad demands a BMX race to the death while calling sonny boy a &ussy for not taking the challenge.

We eat our young around here and blame them for not being fast enough to get out of our way when we ambush them from the side.

[Myg]

Yea, it has to stop guys; if we really care about the game we would treat others with the same respect as we would expect, for a decent and fun experience, ourselves.

I am guilty of ignoring newbies as well, the culture is infectious, I feel bad every time it happens.

[shoresroad]

Maybe we need an intermediate arena.  EW and MW are hardly used, but an arena for 2 weekers and newbs in general might be popular.  With 80% of the players sharing only 26% of the kills you've got to wonder what HiTech's retention rate is for new players.  Maybe an intermediate arena with actual gameplay would help newer players transition into the game and be more likely to stay.

From an old thread in Lusches AH Stats Megathread:

Re: Lusches AH Stats Megathread

« Reply #127 on: March 16, 2013, 03:01:19 PM »
Reply with quoteQuote 

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Quote from: shoresroad on March 16, 2013, 01:43:26 AM

Lusche,

I'm curious about how dominant the pilots are in kills.  Does the 80/20 rule apply.  Can you get this stat.

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Yes, it applies to AH as well, more or less.

Taking the scores of tour 157 and looking at the (scored) kills in Fighter + Attack mode, we get a distribution like this:

X axis are all the players, from the one with most kills to the one(s) with the least number of them. In the end, the top 20% players had been credited with 74% of all kills in both modes combined, so it's almost 80/20

(Note: Taken fron the score sheets, these numbers also include kills of and deaths by GV's as well as deliberate or AFK augers. I would have liked to base it exclusively on the plane/player stats, but that would have been a lot more work for me.)

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70-99 Lusche
100-160 Snailman

AH Stats Megathread

http://www.lastfm.de/user/drkalv