Thank you, Finn. I appreciate the kind words. ~S~


I railed about this some years back...

Deft's site used to track sortie length - a datum set that reflected my 'style' of sortie which, generally speaking, was greater than 40+ minutes per sortie and usually tops in Deft's rankings.

Think about that for a moment... With all the accidental quick sorties one can accumulate over a TOD for any number of reasons: rolling a capped field, crash on takeoff, quick roll to drop eggs at the other end of the Quad; predominately flying a plane that likes to go Boom!; stick malfunction; didn't set Dfuse; wrong plane skin; etc. Those 2-minute types of sorties are included in the same 'average sortie time' set as my preferred (and usually first of the night) sortie of rolling from the rear, climbing to altitude before even thinking of getting into a fight, fighting up to maintain alt., and flying to survive. The fun I find in this game is the 'realistic' sortie that expends 65% or more fuel in a Zero and results in an RTB. You don't see many players doing that anymore, as Points are their goal; survival, not so much.

What that data also showed, interestingly enough, was those who had a large number of sorties with an average flight time of less than 10 minutes. I won't besmirch the most egregious squad for that 'style' of flight profile. But it was obvious and the statistics reflected anecdotes and in-game observations.

So I would add that for WB2020, some other system of 'reward' is developed for those who fly to survive.

FWIW, I'd love to be a Captain before either WB, or I die.

Heh </tangent>.

~S~

~Sakai.

_________________
~S~
~Sakai - 坂井
daimyosakai@gmail.com
Tainan Kokutai - 台南

Akatombo | White 576 | Curtiss AVG

Score is a part of player retention which is key for any game to progress beyond its initial release. Player retention has to have goals outside the actual game play. Score to reach new rank is one of them. Score has to make sense or players will not be retained by it. It becomes something that they ignore and not something that keeps them in the game. Daily goals/rewards are important to. They not only reward a player for playing but attempt to limit how much the player plays as well. You dont want your players to burnout or promote an unhealthy gaming style with the more you play the more you get.

Well if score = retention, I would have left after I made 1st Lt around 10 years ago, LOL! But I am one of those special cases of masochist for being here this long...as are a good number of you.

More than score, I value statistics. Defts page needs priority that matches score development.

Ni Yen.

_________________
~S~
~Sakai - 坂井
daimyosakai@gmail.com
Tainan Kokutai - 台南

Akatombo | White 576 | Curtiss AVG

I'm not starting, but almost to the point of throwing in the towel (started playing with version 2.72) and doing something else for enjoyment. The
reason is the second half of what Her Jabo states. The gaming style mostly on one side is now NOE to bases away from any action and jabocide/
bombacide repeatedly over and over to close bases. Add in the intentional crashing of the NOE players when they get caught out in bound to their
field to commit death at.

This putrid style of play started 10 years ago or so and has caused more than just a few players to throw their hands up in the air and leave. I
know of atleast 30 players that have quit in those years and I'll bet it's over 50-60 players in total.

No matter what eye candy is put into the game; if game play or the point system isn't changed, then put a fork in WB's as it takes it final spiral of death.
It's a shame all the Work Robert and the FM team has put into the game to see it wither on the vine.

IMHO

I'm just about at the end of the line too Grumpy.
The game just allows too much bullshit.
1.Connects so bad that enemy planes are impossible to track.
2.Unreliable gun effectiveness... it seems to shift from day to day. Earlier today, I flew up to a heinkel and fired all the way into collision just to see what would happen. I saw ALL my shots going through the wingroot and fuselage of the airplane, and not a single hit. Strangely enough, tho' it couldn't find my bullets, the sim managed to model the collision quite well. Apparently the only part of my airplane that can reliably hit an enemy is the plane itself.
3.I'm sick of the gang-banging. Try to imagine a game in any other genre that allows one side to outnumber the other by as much as 12-1. Really? And if you're on the '12' side, shame on you. Go buy a shotgun and go to the petting zoo. It will be more challenging. You can call yourself a great hunter, but everyone with half a brain will know you're still just a jerk with a shotgun.

The one bright spot in the game is the FM team; Robert works his butt off and the current team has produced the best models to date.

The game needs to fix scoring, fix the game balance,fix the gunnery, and fix the connect issue. The last one is simple. Stop letting players in with more than 2-3 seconds lag.
As for game balance, well, I've made countless suggestions about using a scoring ratio, or limiting available planes to the gang banging side, or forcing game balance by assigning a side to players as they log in...or even excluding squads from the main arena. However, with people being people, and thus often despicable, that likely wouldn't help.
The sad thing is that all these things could probably be fixed, or at least ameliorated. All it takes is the guts to make it so.

finn

perhaps some of these issues will be addressed in the "2020" version? hopefully it wont be just graphics.

I think all the remaining hardcores in this game each bring valid observations on the state of the game. Many bring years of experience and have seen changes to the game play over time that may not have been conducive to making a game great. Any modern game has to be monitored, adjusted and improved. Bugs need to be addressed immediately or they linger on and reflect poor management. Game play has to be the most important aspect of any game and needs to be corrected if it develops in ways that were not intended by the devs. Probably the number one post you read on any steam reviews is about the devs, good or bad. If your player community feels you have abandoned the game, running a cash grab or not listening to feedback there usually is hell to pay. If you respond well, deploy new updates and correct bugs you will retain players well beyond the natural life of twitch gamers. The old fossils that post here can help WB2020 be great for a whole new generation of WW2 addicts. Bringing the limited game play forward into a new game would be disastrous. You will have a flood of new players eager to try WB2020 and regardless of the graphics if the game play is still stale and does not promote player retention, they will leave just as quickly. Like a brand new restaurant, you only have one chance for a first impression and if you blow it through poor service or food you are not going to keep them as customers.

my loonie

the 4th does that in the practice and dueling arena from time to time. Especially to test and practice specific plane vs planes for up coming S3's. We practice CV landings, attacking buffs, dropping bombs, etc.

S

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MSI X570 Tomahawk Mobo
XFX 5600XT GPU
Ryzen 7 3700 CPU
32Gb Ram

Well Finn
There IS a new score system, well not so new now, but certainly unused.
Ranks start with enlisted and progress up through the officer ranks, more ranks, lower ranks achieved quickly etc.
The values on kills can be scored according to what plane you shoot down, top shelf airplanes, good points, easy shoot down planes, not as many points...….but the kicker that can be done.....is..... a multiplier to be applied to your score when you execute a safe landing at your base.
It was tried and tested during several 1 night events I done...….sadly, soundly rejected cause everyone would have to start at zero points and THAT was pretty much rejected by the player base.
Side adjustment scale on rebuild times for fields.
Player imbalance was scored and rebuild time adjusted according to the imbalance....still sides would not even out and there was rioting in the streets.
I AM advocating for the new score system when a new WB's comes out.
Forgive my brusqueness, time in grade will do that to you.....but the existing player base ( such as it is) is its own worst enemy, wanting improvement, but disliking change

Bring in the new system. If people leave- I'll hold the door for them. An awful lot of them made general bombing undefended posts back in the ETO during unpopulated hours in the bad old days anyway.
It's no good keeping a bad system to keep a tiny player base happy. To hell with it. Build a better game, implement the new scoring system and rebuild the player base. Either we get a larger player base of new and veteran players or we don't. If the latter, how much worse off are we , really?
When the new version comes along, it would be nice if we have had a few months to tweak the new scoring system.
finn