September 13, 2006
Aces High: Arena Format Change
Thanks to your patronage Aces High has grown to the point where a single Main Arena is no longer a sufficient solution. It is time for us to move beyond a single main arena. Today during the weekly terrain change, we will be revamping our arena structure with an entirely new model. We've looked forward to this point because instead of just simply offering more duplicate arenas, we have planned to use this opportunity to diversify our offerings by making different arenas based on different time periods. So instead of having a single arena with all planes available (which naturally emphasizes late war planes), we will have 3 different types of Main Arenas- early-war planes, mid-war planes, and late-war planes. This will give us far more diversity.
We hope that through further growth we can add even more diverse offerings such as more time periods and perhaps even time periods outside of WWII such as WWI or the Korean War. This format will also provide more impetus for us to try and comprehensively develop the plane and vehicle set with stuff that would otherwise get swallowed up by the late-war monsters and see little use outside of special events.
Multiple Mains may seem like an oxymoron, but in fact it isn't. It's not just a matter of semantics because they are all connected through the same scoring, squad, and perk point databases. If your squad decides to spend the night in the Early MA, they do not need to reform the squad there because it already exists. There are no separate scores or perk points for these different arenas- it's all shared. In that regard, these Main Arenas are all one in the same. It neither harms nor benefits your score or perk points to change which Main Arena you fly in from day to day. Perk points earned in one MA count towards the same total as in any of the other Mains. The only difference is what planes and vehicles qualify as a perk ride varies from arena to arena.
Being in this business a long time, we understand that people are creatures of habit and old habits die-hard. Going through any major change is uncomfortable until people become acclimated to the change. This change is especially difficult because we cannot simply add these new arenas; we need to redistribute how the arenas are populated. To accomplish that, we are going to be reducing arena caps so as to not have one arena dominate just by virtue of everybody following the herd. We will also be using small terrains exclusively for now, but that is not a permanent change. Once we are comfortable that people have acclimated to the new format, we will begin to work those elements back in.
With players spreading out, we are aware of the need for better tools to find and communicate with your buddies. We will be working on some new tools to handle this but for now that can be accomplished with the squadron message of the day. (MOTD). The squad MOTD will reach across all the Main Arena’s so the squad leader can be sure that everybody knows where to go on a given night.
Once again, thanks for your support. We hope you will find these changes refreshing. We have waited a long time to get here and we are very excited about the many development directions this opens.
