Player numbers down?

[Devil 505]

This game is so much more than an air combat game. Respectively, this is an open world game. Where the player has the option to fly or drive whatever they wish.

If the game was intended to be only an air combat game, there wouldn't be any GV's. The game is setup to make it enjoyable for those that enjoy planes, vehicles, or both.

Yes it more than only air combat, but do not ignore where the focus is - in the air.

From the HTC hompage:

Aces High takes the art and science of vintage WW1 and WW2 air combat and sets it in a high intensity online multiplayer environment.  Hundreds of players simultaneously battle it out against each other in massive aerial dogfights and bomber raids. 

High fidelity flight simulation is the heart of Aces High but it doesn't end there.  A war rages on the ground and at sea.  Engage enemy armor in tank combat.  Protect your fleet as a gunner or make a torpedo run in a PT boat.  Lead an assault in an amphibious vehicle.  With over 100 warbirds, vehicles, and boats available, you have access to a vast virtual arsenal.

Notice how the emphasis is placed on the game's merits with the air combat. The game is marketed as such and it's called ACES HIGH.

Air combat is why most players came to play this game. It's what they expect, and the current game does not deliver on it like it used to.

[Toad]

There were no gv icons, 

If you have ever been in an airliner and looked down on an interstate highway from 20,000+ feet, you'd understand the BIG advantage GVs have here in the game with respect to visibility.

GVs in the open are easily...VERY easily....seen from MUCH farther away than they are in AH. You should be able to see it MUCH, MUCH farther away even without any icons.

[Toad]

So you think that GVs should have to drive entire distances to other fields?

This discussion has been going on for probably a decade.

No, I do not think that.

If you search the board years back you'll find HT saying he set up the spawns so that both aircraft and GVs have to spend about the same amount of time getting to the fight. If it takes 6 minutes for a fighter to fly a sector to another airfield, the spawns are supposedly set so that it takes a GV about 5-6 minutes of driving to get to the enemy town or whatever. At least that was the original idea.

What I am saying, once again, is that GVs have been given capabilities they did not have in RL that unbalance the game. I realize aircraft have some advantages they did not have in RL. However, these do not unbalance the game.

It's a simple concept.

Again, this is a GAME. Not a simulator. Things are made easier to make it fun and enjoyable. It's the same as you not having to control your mixture and what not in your plane. You can just spawn to the runway and go full throttle and have at it.

And if you research my posts from a decade+ ago, you'll see that I totally agree with you. Not being a simulator, however, isn't the same as game balance.

I would say the game doesn't favor GVs anymore than it does planes.

That is your opinion and you are most certainly entitled to it. However, I'm sure you realize that other people have their own opinions....to which they are also entitled....and those opinions do not always agree with your view.

[Vraciu]

If you have ever been in an airliner and looked down on an interstate highway from 20,000+ feet, you'd understand the BIG advantage GVs have here in the game with respect to visibility.

GVs in the open are easily...VERY easily....seen from MUCH farther away than they are in AH. You should be able to see it MUCH, MUCH farther away even without any icons.

Which is why we need the icons back.   

[Bizman]

Although I agree that cars can easily be seen from a passenger plane flying at 10 km/30,000 ft, there's some differences between them and GV's. Cars usually are bright and shiny against a flat dark grey tarmac. GV's feature a matte camouflage painting which makes them hard to spot especially if they're sitting still among high undergrowth.

That said, I'd very much like to see the enemy GV's shiny red...

[Vraciu]

The point is, flying over a GV at 50' would be easier to spot than this.   

[BowHTR]

Yes it more than only air combat, but do not ignore where the focus is - in the air.

From the HTC hompage:
Notice how the emphasis is placed on the game's merits with the air combat. The game is marketed as such and it's called ACES HIGH.

Air combat is why most players came to play this game. It's what they expect, and the current game does not deliver on it like it used to.

The game delivers the same thing it has been for the past years. HiTech provides the environment, players make the gameplay. I understand that the majority of players are here for air combat. However, you will not always find it due to how people choose to play the game. That's the advantage of open world games, the player can choose what they want to do.

<snip>

What I am saying, once again, is that GVs have been given capabilities they did not have in RL that unbalance the game. I realize aircraft have some advantages they did not have in RL. However, these do not unbalance the game.

<snip>

Please provide an example of what capability that GVs have that causes an unbalance in the game? Im not a big GVer, so please shed a little light on this.

[Devil 505]

The game delivers the same thing it has been for the past years. HiTech provides the environment, players make the gameplay. I understand that the majority of players are here for air combat. However, you will not always find it due to how people choose to play the game. That's the advantage of open world games, the player can choose what they want to do.

Every ask yourself why the players do what they do? Ever ask why what changed to make them change from what they did?

Game mechanics dictate behavior, not the other way around.

[BowHTR]

Every ask yourself why the players do what they do? Ever ask why what changed to make them change from what they did?

Game mechanics dictate behavior, not the other way around.

Devil, we could beat this horse all day I'm sure. In the end, I know what made my group lose members, and it wasn't a game mechanic or anything specific with the game itself. It was the players that made them leave. Players are the main driving force of any game. Yes the game has to provide the wants to play, and make the game interesting. However, it comes back to the players that make a game like AH survive.

 

[Toad]

GV's feature a matte camouflage painting which makes them hard to spot especially if they're sitting still among high undergrowth.

I am not arguing that GVs can't be camouflaged and hidden in forested areas. That's where most German vehicles spent the day after D-Day. OTOH, moving across open country they are very easy to spot. Do we have dust trails in AH? You do in RL. Ever flown over a pickup truck moving across a harvested wheat field at 5k+ ? I have in a PT-19. VERY easy to spot. Even a parked green John Deere tractor parked on a green wheat field is VERY easy to spot.

The point is, flying over a GV at 50' would be easier to spot than this.

WAY easier. And from MUCH, MUCH farther than 50'.

Please provide an example of what capability that GVs have that causes an unbalance in the game? Im not a big GVer, so please shed a little light on this.

The Romulan cloaking device mentioned above. This puts the aircraft into easy meat range before the pilot's vision can penetrate the cloaking device. No balance.

Without it, normally the GV would be vulnerable to a jabo attack without the aircraft ever getting into easy meat range.

Balance. Low percentage higher alt jabo attack allowing low percentage anti-air defense shots.

Game mechanics dictate behavior, not the other way around.

More wisdom from Devil 505.

[Oldman731]

Air combat is why most players came to play this game.

Once upon a time, that was so.  Now...who knows...?

FWIW, if we're here to fight other planes, why do we care whether we can see the trucks?

- oldman

[Devil 505]

If we can see them easier, we can kill them easier. If they die more often, they will be motivated to find other ways to take bases. The "win teh warz" types will gravitate to the easiest method. Ever since the GV range was shortened, it's been far too easy to sneak GV's around and the GV became became the safe option to capture bases. If the game mechanics can be changed to restore the natural order, with GV's being easy to spot and kill, then attack planes will begin to be used more often.

[ccvi]

And while the aircraft are fairly closely limited to their actual RL capabilities, the GVs are not.

There's two separate topics. Vehicle capabilities and environment.

For aircraft you're making a point for "real" capabilities. Which is basically limited to their performance. No more, no less. They are trivial to use with basically 0 workload for the pilot, spotting aircraft at a range where icons appear requires extreme patience and a bit of luck, in-flight high-precision radar, ...
That's no more real than the modeling of the GVs. Probably, GVs are more real, since a single player simulate the complete multi-person crew of a tank plus infantry accompanying the tank, where in an aircraft the player simulates only the pilot.

For example, where aircraft have to fly across a sector of water to attack a base on a different landmass as they did in RL, the GVs simply (Hey! Presto!) spawn from one base across a sector of water into an attack position on a different landmass. No boarding an LST and disembarking on a contested beachead as in RL.

Thus, this is why I say the game has been skewed to favor GVs in some (many?) respects.

This is a property of the environment, not the capabilities of the vehicles. In here a single GV is moving, while in reality it would be multiple vehicles moving together plus people on foot. The main difference is that a real vehicle once spottet couldn't get far away. Here GV can simpy teleport to another area (despawn, and reappear at any spawn of their choosing).

On the other hand, aircraft don't need maintenance either. The fight isn't between aircraft in combat with the supply chain for GVs but with GVs at the front lines.

The aircraft in AH have access to the exact same info the WW2 pilots had, plus some. There were no gv icons, you couldn't "hear" the gv running, the towns didn't flash. Now I'll grant you, as far as I know, tanks didn't "Main Gun" aircraft down either. There are no "vehicle convoys" in AH, so that argument is irrelevant.

Plus "some"? Plus a lot. Also, plus a lot of stupidity. In reality, tanks didn't main gun aircraft, because pilots were sane enough to not come in so low to drop bombs/rockets from such short range that it would have been even remotely viable to get a hit with the main gun. Diving in vertical at 400 mph to drop at 1000 ft to get pin-point accuracy on vehicles? Not the typical approach in reality, but the main reason why the Wirbel is so deadly in here.

want to kill a town - take a bomber, not a Calliope
need to capture a base - take a goon, not and M3
other GV's trying to capture your base - take an Il-2, not a tank
Tired of your tank getting killed by Il-2's - take a fighter, not a Wirb

As it stands, none of those aircraft options are the better option and game suffers because of it.

Except for the troops I don't see your problem. A bomber clears a town in max. 2 passes, even a rocket-loaded M4 can barely do it with one load and takes much longer. Fighter-bombers can attack GVs much more reliably than other GVs can. This includes being nearly untouchable for the GVs (depending on the sanity of the pilot - not on the uber powers of the GVs). Reliably taking down IL2s with Wirbs? Only by continuously respawning, waiting for the pilot to mess up, unlike doing so in a fighter, where the fighter can be basically untouchable by the IL2.

Lack of patience, and really really wanting to push through is the problem. Going what may feel like the easy way and pushing through forcefully creates a vulnerability, that you seem to perceive as an imbalance.

However, going the slow and safe way increases the risk of becoming a victim to enemy fighters. They have more time to set up an attack. Even friendly fighters as support won't help much, because also the enemy fighters like to push through to get the easy kills, instead of going the safe way. This behavior is supported by in-flight radar and aircraft icons. In reality it was much easier for ground attack aircraft to avoid being spottet, or to get away at least. The enemy wouldn't be stupid enough to follow to the deck even if able to maintain visual contact, and continuing pursuit through ack.

The point is, flying over a GV at 50' would be easier to spot than this.

Maybe and no. Physically, maybe, due to higher resolution of reality (consider getting a 4k screen to solve the problem). However, doing 300+ mph at 50' you'd be quite busy watching for other things and flying the airplane. GVs are nicely visible at that distance in game. Dieing has no consequences, and workload for flying is minimal. Quite an advantage over reality providing more time slices to visually scan the area for GVs.

Do we have dust trails in AH? You do in RL. Ever flown over a pickup truck moving across a harvested wheat field at 5k+ ? I have in a PT-19. VERY easy to spot. Even a parked green John Deere tractor parked on a green wheat field is VERY easy to spot.

Try again in typical European weather. Europe isn't the typical American desert.



I'm not trying to argue that everything is fine with the ground war. The level-of-detail feature of the trees makes things behave very inconsistently. At different detail levels (distance/zoom setting) vehicles may or may not be visible. This was a lot better with the old trees, that were always exactly the same, regardless of distance and zoom. Once in drawing range - clear visibility. Maybe its less of an issue when moving the tree-slider to max-distance (can't do that at the moment).

[save]

<snip> There's two separate topics. Vehicle capabilities and environment.

For aircraft you're making a point for "real" capabilities. Which is basically limited to their performance. No more, no less. They are trivial to use with basically 0 workload for the pilot, spotting aircraft at a range where icons appear requires extreme patience and a bit of luck, in-flight high-precision radar, ...
That's no more real than the modeling of the GVs. Probably, GVs are more real, since a single player simulate the complete multi-person crew of a tank plus infantry accompanying the tank, where in an aircraft the player simulates only the pilot.
<snip>

Plus "some"? Plus a lot. Also, plus a lot of stupidity. In reality, tanks didn't main gun aircraft, because pilots were sane enough to not come in so low to drop bombs/rockets from such short range that it would have been even remotely viable to get a hit with the main gun. Diving in vertical at 400 mph to drop at 1000 ft to get pin-point accuracy on vehicles? Not the typical approach in reality, but the main reason why the Wirbel is so deadly in here.
Try again in typical European weather. Europe isn't the typical American desert.
<snip>

You can's simply main-gun a plane from a gunner view, it's very narrow, with AH 360 view and automatic range - no problem !

AH have a 3-5 crew working as one nervous system, IRL even finding that 300mph plane after getting gunner ordered to shoot him with a main gun is a PITA.

Wirby's/Ostwinds have a ranging live computer that makes aerial kills easy, specially as you make the kill before that plane even see your icon.

Hazy weather in Europe, low clouds, makes it harder to spot enemies for both GV and planes.

Wet / muddy / snowy weather makes the GV tracks easy to spot from the air and are easy to follow to it's producing GV, we took lot's of precaution not to go in open terrain because of that.

If GV's are shooting they  reveal their position, the shot also blocks a second shot from a GV for quite s some time in many weather/climate types.

[Toad]

spotting aircraft at a range where icons appear requires extreme patience and a bit of luck, in-flight high-precision radar, ...

Excuse me for asking but do you have any experience flying and spotting aircraft? Let me refer you to a very old thread on this topic.  http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,25522.0.html

In short, no...it doesn't require extreme patience, luck or inflight precision radar. The actual truth is the icons appear at a shorter range than you could see other aircraft in clear skies.

That's no more real than the modeling of the GVs. Probably, GVs are more real, since a single player simulate the complete multi-person crew of a tank plus infantry accompanying the tank, where in an aircraft the player simulates only the pilot.

Did you read what you typed? One player serving 4 crew positions is more real than one player serving as a single pilot in a single seat aircraft? Say what?

This is a property of the environment,

Which is what I have pointed out. The game is unbalanced towards the GVs in several ways. Tilting the environment in their favor is one of them.

On the other hand, aircraft don't need maintenance either.

None of the vehicles or aircraft in the game need "maintenance". In fact, the "resupply" of damaged vehicles is another tilt in favor of the GVs.

Diving in vertical at 400 mph to drop at 1000 ft to get pin-point accuracy on vehicles?

Shouldn't have to dive to 1000' at all. The GVs should be far more visible from much higher altitudes, negating the necessity to get anywhere near that low.

The advantage GVs get here from not being visible at normal Mark 1 eyeball ranges is huge. At a minimum the old GV icon range should be restored.

Try again in typical European weather. Europe isn't the typical American desert.

Nor do the maps mimic typical weather and terrain. We mostly have clear skies and much open area.