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Coming large update 2 years 4 months ago #383718

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Zup, not liking something and thinking even dare saying it is a bad idea or stupid is not "panic".  Not all your game changes are good. And not e veryone catches everything on the forum or even cares to follow it daily. For the most part you try and do improve things but this latest was clearly a brain fart :)



 
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Coming large update 2 years 4 months ago #383726

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Daring to say you don't like something or it's a bad idea is not panic. But going everywhere, forum and world chat in-game telling everyone that I took your money and some other fun stuff just because of an update that I asked for feedback here... does certainly look like "panic" to me. A clear brain fart on your part.

I'm still waiting for feedback since not every platform got the update, and I adjust accordingly to the result. The reaction, in general, is that most people like the new system. Newbies don't die in 1 second time against higher ranks. They will die because obviously, they are newbies, but they can at least enjoy playing it.
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Last edit: by zuperman.

Coming large update 2 years 4 months ago #383734

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I like the fact that lower ranked players are harder to bring down. I have to say that I am not happy that I take one or two hits, but that is just my pride, it should be that way. All in all it works okay for me from a fairness standpoint. Hey, can you make the horses a little less armored? Only a bomb kills them still, no amount of bullets seem to affect the horse and rider.
EDIT********

After playing some more I can see where veteran players would have an issue with the update. While it is okay to have to shoot the new folks multiple times I think you may have gone a little extreme. I noticed that I could bring a moraf down with 1 or 2 hits, which really isn't a good idea. There has to be some benefit to being a high ranking experienced player. Im not saying to make the top folks harder to bring down, but by making them much, much easier to kill the update has kind of defeated the purpose, so to speak. Perhaps you can program the game to where the folks in the 40's return to the 4 hits and the folks in the single digits... 1-9, take say 8-10, tops. I know I am not a programmer but there has to be some kind of middle ground from what was, and what is now in the update?

Too easy to bring down those who used to be difficult... those folks shouldn't suffer what has become a penalty for being a long time and loyal player.

I stand by saying it is good to make the new folks harder to kill but don't make the top folks too easy to kill. What do you think Zuperman?








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Coming large update 2 years 4 months ago #383738

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All satisfactory for me, seems no benefit or penalty at my rank level, but I think its a good idea.
What I do have trouble with is games with mixed WW1 and WW2 planes. I think they could be balanced up by giving the WW2 planes a wider turning circle,  which they would have had, make it possible to out turn them in a dogfight. Or is this already the case? Doesn't seem like it.
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Coming large update 2 years 4 months ago #383740

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"I like the fact that lower ranked players are harder to bring down. "

Viper, new players shouldn't be in games with veterans.

 





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Last edit: by V.Huntress War.

Coming large update 2 years 4 months ago #383741

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"All satisfactory for me"


Gannet if i seen you more than in 1 or  2 matches is much. Sorry but you dont play enough to know how its going on.






 





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Coming large update 2 years 4 months ago #383742

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Some veterans seem to have disappeared from the games… why is that?
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Coming large update 2 years 4 months ago #383745

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I edited my original reply.








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Coming large update 2 years 4 months ago #383749

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Some veterans seem to have disappeared from the games… why is that?


My thoughts on this and also from talking to other former players

Too many bad updates that have nothing to do with flying planes. Fox hunting, riding ponies, A/A guns on carriers and zeppelin. The focus needs to be on dogfighting, not activities for the soldier to do. 

Squad Wars and the behavior of Acegirl, frits, dusty and others who totally went against the spirit of the game, giving their squadmates on the enemy team free passes and totally ruining the game. 

World chat being for subscribers only. The chat is what sucks people into the game. As long as the chat is paid only, the game will not grow.

Too many toxic players who take the fun out of the game. I had many friends on this games, we played to goof around and not be too serious. But It got old having to deal with certain self righteous players who do nothing but play dogfight all day, recording and reporting everything to Zuperman, or making inflammatory posts on forum because they were outplayed. Many long time players were banned or just found something better to spend their time on. Only the self righteous remain. 

But more than anything, is because the game used to be simple to pick up and play. 

I still enjoy the game, but I much preferred when it was simple and world war 1 planes only. 

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Coming large update 2 years 4 months ago #383750

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Huntress, you're right.
Far too true unfortunately. 
(But I can still have an opinion, and express how it is for ME.)
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Coming large update 2 years 4 months ago #383752

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Ok, let me address those thoughts since some may be right some are plain wrong.

1) Too many bad updates? I basically didn't touch the game for months until recently. No updates. Zero. None. Since I moved to a different country and I was super busy. So I doubt it was due to too many updates. In fact it may be due to too FEW updates.

2) Fox hunting, riding ponies? Fox was there as an easter egg. Same thing that I have dropped for surprises on the game. Riding ponies? It was requested by some they wanted to ride a horse. In any case... it was added what? 3 years ago? Nothing recent.

3) Nothing to do with flying planes? Ok. Updates have been mostly adding new planes, improving features of the planes, armor, speed differences, etc... basically, almost all updates I make are for the planes with something else in between.

4) World chat being for subscribers only, the chat is what sucks people into the game: maybe, but world chat is for subscribers only after rank 15. That means you can literally spend weeks playing before you are out of world chat. I don't think that´s what sucks players in, otherwise, you would see tons of people in the world chat talking and then at rank 15 leaving the game.

5) You preferred when it was WW1 only. That was almost a decade ago now.

So while I get your frustration and what you like or don't like, it doesn't explain much for the general public recently.

Now, I'll give my view since I have data to base it on:

1) Old players leave because they are old players. Like every game, people get tired of them. I used to play WoW, I don't anymore. I used to play Final Fantasy. I don't anymore. Perfectly fine games, but you grow out of them. So old players move to different games or out of games, it's just the law of passage of time.

2) Some players, and here you are right, were ruining the game for everyone else. The problem is that those same players also spent a large amount of time here and had a large cult following. So banning them, would get many people mad. When I did that, many left. I had to make that choice. World chat may suck some people into the game. But getting killed as soon as you join for the first time 30 times in a roll, does not. And I can see it on the stats. Newbies were giving up super fast when they came across players that massacred them for points time after time. And they were not returning. What sucked people into the game was to have fun. Coming in and see you can kill a few people and get killed too.

3) Visibility. Several years ago, games in the app stores were visible due to quality and reviews. That meant, if your game was good and got nice reviews, it would be listed on top of the store for everyone to pick it up. It worked perfectly fine for me and for most developers that put time into making good games. Nowadays, apple and google, display the store content based on who pays the most for advertising. So someone with a crappy game but $200k to spend will be placed on the top spot for everyone to see and download the game. Meanwhile, the others, no matter how good the games are, will not be even visible. This can be easily proven by searching for "dogfight" or similar, which used to display this game first for obvious reasons. And sometimes you get all kinds of other names and have to scroll way down to find Dogfight. This has stopped DRAMATICALLY the recruit of new players since they simply don't find the game unless some existing player tells them. Now only whoever spends on Apple and Google ads, gets the players.

4) Massive amount of new games. And any game competes with the whole system. Games compete for time. If you are watching Netflix, you are not playing. If you are playing Fortnite, you are not playing Dogfight. It brings me back to point 3. I either spend a fortune on the store, or it's hard to get noticed.

5) Drama. There was a lot of drama in the game. In fact, there always is in every game with a community after several years. That's why many games decide not to have a forum or chat. To avoid drama.



Those are some of the things.

What I'm doing moving forward... fix some of this stuff. Basically focusing on getting newbies to join and free (world chat is free, almost everything is no subscription required until rank 10/15 already) and protecting them a bit against players who would bully them. That's the whole idea behind the new armor system.

I'm also working on new missions, and they take time since they require whole new systems to be designed and coded. For instance the new bombers mission is only half of it. I want people to be able to jump into different planes and play together in the same plane. Like 1 flying and another person on the same plane but on the gun. That's why I added those 2 bombers into the german side. And so on. But the complexity of those things require time and that's why sometimes you see a brain fart on my part and things look weird because I couldn't think of every possible escenario.

In any case, focusing right now:
1) Better level playing field for all ranks.
2) New missions and planes and vehicles.
3) New stuff in the terrain and air that belongs to the new missions.
4) More cooperation between missions.
5) System to allow for more variety of airplanes. So you would pick different planes and not only your best one depending on the scenario.



And hell yeah, I make mistakes all the time, but that's why I try to update with changes and fixes. I'm well aware that not every change people will like. So it's not an easy task and prone to mistakes.







 
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Last edit: by zuperman.

Coming large update 2 years 4 months ago #383761

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The lag is not only you with the server. But you and every other player. I'm in south america right now. If you play against me, you will see me lagging most likely. And I will see you lagging. Because it's the speed between the two of us.
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Coming large update 2 years 4 months ago #383767

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That´s not that simple, there used to be many more new players daily because the app store positioned games based on ratings. So around 1000 new people would join every day. Now maybe I get 20. And of course, only a percentage of those stays.

What this means is that i split between different servers per continent, you simply won´t see anyone. The options right now are lag between continents or less lag but you won´t see more than 2 or 3 people at a time.

The huge issues is there is almost no downloads now due to the app store changes. It's not a matter of paying or not. In fact almost everything is free in game. I would need a load of money to get a marketing campaign up and running for the app store to display it. The ads are so expensive it cost about $100 to get 2 or 3 new people in game, so only large corporations can afford it and that's why you see so many games flooded with ads. The app store monopolies are milking developers if they want to be noticed. In short, the focus right now is to get new players that join to stay and to get the word out somehow so we can continue growing the community.
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Last edit: by zuperman.

Coming large update 2 years 4 months ago #383769

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"a game that previously worked impeccably, rarely with lag and with a high response factor"

First time I hear this in over 10 years. I´ve mostly heard complains and complains about how everything was laggy, buggy, and so on since day one. Funny.
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Coming large update 2 years 4 months ago #383770

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-I enjoy the new players getting to interact with veteran players. I've seen several ask for help and many step up to answer questions. I'll often choose to chat and take chance of being fired down, but it helps keep the new players around and answer their questions. 

-One thing I noticed at take-off there is a ghost plane on occasion. I'm not sure if I'm seeing the plane in front of me, lag or some combination of both. 
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Coming large update 2 years 4 months ago #383778

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Interesting posts, thanks Zup and DD.
We appreciate how the game has been squeezed and a single server has become unavoidable.
We just have to deal with lag in our game play. Would it be possible to have some sort of indication on each player how big the lag between them and us is? Then we could have some idea how far ahead of them to aim. Maybe have a their name go through a colour range. eg red is high lag through the spectrum to violet low lag.
.
Another idea:   Is it practical to have the aircraft location data going straight peer to peer, rather than through the server? Might improve lag.
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Coming large update 2 years 4 months ago #383785

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The servers are there, they are just offline. If enough new people were downloading daily (thousands before the app store changes), I would just turn them on. Right now, it is what it is. I can't spend 20k a month on advertising to get that amount of players. Unless a Kardashian is willing to do an instagram post for free for me...
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Coming large update 2 years 4 months ago #383786

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Maybe you need to put your energies into courting someone rich and/or famous.
Like Peter Jackson, he's mad keen on WW1 planes, owns a museum of them.
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Coming large update 2 years 4 months ago #383792

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Yeah I tried to see how to contact him. Not easy task lol
You can contact the museum where he has the collection though  The Vintage Aviator |
pretty cool


 
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Coming large update 2 years 4 months ago #383801

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Is part of the update the addition of machine gun flashes at the gun sight while in the cockpit view mode? Is there a way to disable the flashes? They are a bit distracting and don't allow the player to see where his shots are heading making it more difficult to hit the intended target. Nice and sparkly, but hurts my eyes.

Also, there is no longer a way to fuel up except at a base or carrier? Just wondering what else was included in the update that comes as a surprise while trying to plan a strategy.








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Coming large update 2 years 4 months ago #383802

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I hear Kim Kardashian is available now. Go work your charms
 


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Coming large update 2 years 4 months ago #383806

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Is part of the update the addition of machine gun flashes at the gun sight while in the cockpit view mode? Is there a way to disable the flashes? They are a bit distracting and don't allow the player to see where his shots are heading making it more difficult to hit the intended target. Nice and sparkly, but hurts my eyes.

Also, there is no longer a way to fuel up except at a base or carrier? Just wondering what else was included in the update that comes as a surprise while trying to plan a strategy.


yes

 





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Last edit: by V.Huntress War.

Coming large update 2 years 4 months ago #383807

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The flashes seem that Unity changed something on the graphics for mobile and it displays very strongly. On PC it doesn't seem to happen. It only happens on the ones that have the machine gun right in front of you. I'm rolling back to a previous Unity version to fix that.

As for the refueling, it was always like that. Where did you refuel before? 
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Coming large update 2 years 4 months ago #383809

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I could refuel landing anywhere and getting out and in the plane. Not anymore.
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Coming large update 2 years 4 months ago #383812

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I stopped playing a couple years ago. Think it was a couple years. The bullet drop thing was too much for me, and the environment around here became too toxic for me. Friends got me playing again, and I have to say, brings back memories. The fuel thing cracks me up. I was getting my ass shot out of the skies, so I tried a sneak on some hangers. Ran out of fuel half way across the map. Laughed my ass off the whole time I was gliding down trying to reach those damn hangers!


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Coming large update 2 years 4 months ago #383817

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Yeah, fueling anywhere was a bug. It should have always been that you could refuel at certain places, otherwise no much sense of having fuel limit.
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Coming large update 2 years 4 months ago #383818

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I like flying the plane around since I'm online now I can have better plane a tank a horse motorcycle, and my new friends online I can chat with too.
There used to be town but it's gone now. Will it come back? I have so much fun even when I lose. I hope the town comes back.
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Coming large update 2 years 4 months ago #383820

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Ok  thats one of the issues  we have to live wilh or is it possible to do something about it... I mean playing a game with ppl all around the world on a game that's known to lag by players and the developer, how attractive is that to pay for ?

I recall you had servers located in all parts of the world but you thought that they was to expensive at the time...
Where the servers located now and how many of them you have connected to the game ?

Are you planning to relocate servers ?
 Even might  get several servers again to minimize the issues with lag and interact with ppl from other continents?



I HAVENT SEEN A MOM PLAY FOR AGES DIX. NOTHING PERSONAL. COMPLAINING ABOUTNA GAME YOU NOT.LONGER PLAY DOESN'T MAKE SENSE.
 
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Coming large update 2 years 4 months ago #383821

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If you ever come to New Zealand, the museum is awesome, a must see for you, all planes in full size dioramas. 
eg.
 

You could try this one, wingnutfilms is his film making company. 
Q. I would like to send an email to Peter Jackson
A. If you are trying to contact Peter Jackson, please email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.




 
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Coming large update 2 years 4 months ago #383822

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Yep, remember the multiple servers. Actually, back then I used to use them all, from where I am, it didn't seem to make much difference to the lag, maybe just the South American one a little slower, seemed to be some mainly some other more random factor.

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