AH 3

[Bear]

Do you think it's going to save Aces High?

[joach1m]

It's a bandage places over a wound that needs stitches IMO

[joach1m]

But if AH does go down I'll be pretty upset lol I hope it saves it.

[Tec]

My theory is that it will be the final nail in the coffin. After the debacle that was Combat Tour where they wasted god knows how much money on development of a product that never saw the light of day they are now wasting a bunch of money on an update that won't be good enough to draw much if any new blood, yet will probably push out a bunch of the old codgers with ancient machines or who don't like change. I think they should just call it good, permanently end development, close up the office and shitcan everyone but skuzzy to keep it going. Drop the cost to $10 a month and put the servers in the cheapest space they can get and wait for their clientele to die off.

[Bear]

Sept 25, 2015 20:34:06 GMT -5 Tec said:

My theory is that it will be the final nail in the coffin. After the debacle that was Combat Tour where they wasted god knows how much money on development of a product that never saw the light of day they are now wasting a bunch of money on an update that won't be good enough to draw much if any new blood, yet will probably push out a bunch of the old codgers with ancient machines or who don't like change. I think they should just call it good, permanently end development, close up the office and shitcan everyone but skuzzy to keep it going. Drop the cost to $10 a month and put the servers in the cheapest space they can get and wait for their clientele to die off.

Amazing how easy they got off with the whole Combat Tour shit. They worked on that for a couple years.

[kappa]

They been working ah3 for like 18months now, right? lol

[joach1m]

Sept 26, 2015 0:18:31 GMT -5 kappa said:

They been working ah3 for like 18months now, right? lol

well I held off getting my toc plaque for the hopes of the update coming soon so I could have a nicer picture on it. I won that in 2012 lol

[Anarchy]

I just wish to have a positive attitude about it and to do anything possible to help with a positive attitude as well.

[ReVo]

I was pretty hyped for the update until I watched some of the very disappointing alpha footage. I always had trouble convincing people (Especially those who already played War Thunder/IL2/DCS or weren't already fans of WWII aviation) to try out the game once they saw the dated graphics. Those who did give the game a shot weren't especially impressed and I don't think this update will improve things much. Honestly the players were what made AH enjoyable and most of the good guys have long since left.

My hope is that a smaller developer will see the niche in the market for an open world combat flight simulator and create the next Air Warrior, because I don't think AH is going to make it.

[changeup]

I think it'll survive. I think how well it survives depends on Dales ability to realize he doesn't have all the answers. That will free him up to do what he does best. I don't know if he can but he should be able to see that truism from where he's standing now.

The longer he waits though, the more folks will find somewhere else to play-and-stay.

[Violator]

The market has already become big from other games. All he has to do is market the game correctly and give a longer free time before you have to subscribe. It pisses me off he puts up that bomber show on the front page but you cant even see any damage being done to the bombers, WTF!

He has major marketing and PR issues and that can be the difference from attracting new players or still remaining a game no one has ever heard of. You can have the best product in the world, but if no one has ever heard of it, no one will buy it.

[Triton28]

My first impression was it needs to look better than it does. I was cautiously optimistic in the closed alpha part when we were just running FPS testing. The textures and graphics I saw in that FPS console seemed like they had potential, as they were on par with more current titles I've played. Not sure why that didn't translate like I'd hoped, but I'll cross my fingers that they're going to wow me any day now. Pretty much all you can do. It's not like they actually seem to value feedback... lol.

[gman]

I think Changeup said it best - it's mostly Dale's mind and attitude that are the issue IMO. Look at recent bbs posts, constantly fighting with complaining customers (he told a guy straight up he banned his thread "mostly because you make me angry by complaining as I'm working my ass off on AH3"). He also said that "no moderator in the history of this game has ever made a mistake and muted somebody in error". So, in 15 years, HTC is PERFECT.

Good one huh. This is the problem - Dale THINKS everything he does IS perfect. Look how long it takes him to admit that complaints just MAY have some validity, all kinds of agonizing and then little tiny changes instead of just fixing the fucking problems. It's 99 percent ego, same as their forums, they just revel in the sycophants there that always tow that party line of "everything is perfect and complainers can stfu or leave". Well look at the numbers. They have been leaving. And not for HTC's standard reason given, which is "people tire of games in 2 years, then leave". Heh. Only when there are new games to play. And there aren't, not really, anything similar to AH is very simple usually, and hence boring to those customers who want what AH does, without all the BS.

I too was very disappointed with the Alpha, so much so that I've purposefully stayed away, and am not returning until beta. TicTacToe with the Sheep, lame graphics...come ON. It looks like a roll of life savers now, the colors are ridiculous, IMO it looks worse, not better. Then this gameplay issue - good god. I hope the tictactoe stuff isn't their main attraction, or it's doomed.

I do agree with Vio too, and have been saying the same thing since WT and WOT came out - those games blew up the pie - there are SO SO many potential customers out there to grab, you just have to go get them. Yet HTC, having hired a "PR Girl", has a total of 3 Twitter posts, almost zero FB updates, and maybe 2 or 3 total updates on their OWN HOME PAGE. It's ridiculous.

I'll say this for the record. If I could set up a pirate Aces High like those Russians did with Warbirds in some offshore country, and I had the reigns on just the old current game there, the numbers would be back where they used to be, by simply adjusting the gameplay so it's faster and better, by changing the rules HTC refuses to.

It's also not rocket science to build AH back up with the "new" version, even with it's problems, there isn't anything else like it around, or likely to be. Add in some ground units and a couple planes that are free to play, make the servers 1000 players or so, and cap the freebies so that sub clients can always get in, and people will sub out of those freebies in order to play the full game. It also gives the sub clients more to do by having swarms of live players to kill all the time. Win win. Eventually you would have so many subs ftp wouldn't be an issue, you would have WT and WOT like problems, too many players. This could be done in the game right now as well IMO.

One last thing, HTC I think became small due to ego issues from the top. Look at the group they had when this all started, I remember talking on the phone back in 1999 to 3 or 4 different guys, and there was 2 or 3 others there working on it as well. They had a team of I think 4 or 5 really key good people. Now there is Dale. And the art guy, Waffle, but that's it. Development is understandably slow when everyone leaves.

[gman]

And " It's not like they actually seem to value feedback... lol." did make me el oh el.

[Triton28]

That's a screenshot from Arma3 Breaking Point. Arma3 itself came out in 2013. To me it's the standard for graphics when crawling around on the ground... and since we've got GV's, AH3 needs to look something close to this to keep up, IMO. Hell, the reworked cockpits don't look as good as the textures on that stone wall, IMO.