A few things that are concerning to me.
I am ranked #6 in K/H this month. It's a 10.5 kills per hour. This means that only 5 other players get more than 11 kills per hour on average. Think about that. The majority of players I recon are in the 3 kills per hour. Even 6 kills per hour is top 100! With the majority of players getting 3 kills per hour, this is indicative of slow game play. This to me is very glaring reason why many haven't stuck around. It takes a long time for most average players to even get a kill in the time they are playing. Its crazy for me to believe honestly, but the #s don't lie here. Back in 2008, I was pushing 16 kills per hour. My point is that, with lower player #s, the time to find guys and shoot them down has increased significantly. Ie, it takes much longer to find players to shoot down.
My hypothesis is this: Do Kills/Time have an impact on whether a player sticks around in the game longer?
If a player can only achieve 1 or 2 kills per hour on average. Are they getting what they want from the game?
If a player has quicker access to fights, will they have more fun because they get more kills per hour?
This is what I want to prove, do smaller maps with closer bases create more action, thus a higher kills/time, thus keeping players around longer?
Would players being able to get kills faster be more beneficial in keep them around longer?
My opinion is yes, it would benefit the game much more for players to be able to get kills faster.
Another thing I noticed this weekend. BowlMA was up again, all Thanksgiving break for 5 days now, after it was just up all last weekend. Yesterday, Rooks had 15 bases total, bish and knights both had more than 20% of rook bases. Knights went to go attack bish, bish kept fighting rooks or rooks were mainly going after bish. The knights were left with hoards going base to base with no defense. I did not roll one time late afternoon and last night because it was pointless. There were no fights for knights. I did not know who was winning the rook bish battle. My guess was the rooks. So here I am, sitting on the knights side, trying to find a fight, but there is nothing, on a huge bellybutton map with 150 bases, and I can't even fly over the rooks/bish side to join their fight...
My point is, why is there no incentive for Bish to fight knights? It went like this all afternoon.
Would it be better to close out a map after 2 or 3 days instead of 5 if a team cannot win? IMO, having a map stay up for this long, with boring gameplay, and far distances to attack fields ect, has a big impact on that kills per hour stat which has a big impact on keeping players in the game.
If we can increase the average kills/hour for players, it will bring in and keep more players. That is what we should be focused on.