Why are you not flying TAW? (North American Time-Zone Players)

[SCG_Wulfe]

I'm placing this here so that I can hopefully capture a decent sample of all IL2 Online players from the North American prime-time time zone. 

 

We have noticed a marked drop off in the number of players flying TAW during American evenings over the past few seasons and I wanted to start a poll to see what the reasons might be.

 

No answer is the wrong answer. I just want to get a feel of the thoughts of the community to present to the TAW devs. 

 

Edited May 13, 2020 by SCG_Wulfe

[RedKestrel]

3 minutes ago, SCG_Wulfe said:

I'm placing this here so that I can hopefully capture a decent sample of all IL2 Online players from the North American prime-time time zone. 

 

We have noticed a marked drop off in the number of players flying TAW during American evenings over the past few seasons and I wanted to start a poll to see what the reasons might be.

 

I really want to be able to check two boxes - One, there is a lot of rules and stuff to think about in TAW, so I find it is not worth it to join the campaign when I have limited time to play, which is almost always. TAW just requires more commitment than I can offer at this time. If I had time to play 8-10 hours a week I would join, I find that is my minimum commitment when talking about a persistent campaign, otherwise it seems not worth it to me.

The second factor is that I really like the western front late war setting. 

I don't think the rules and structure are a bad thing, I think it is good to have that server out there - but it's a bit of an issue for me when I have limited play time.

[SCG_Wulfe]

1 minute ago, RedKestrel said:

I really want to be able to check two boxes - One, there is a lot of rules and stuff to think about in TAW, so I find it is not worth it to join the campaign when I have limited time to play, which is almost always. TAW just requires more commitment than I can offer at this time. If I had time to play 8-10 hours a week I would join, I find that is my minimum commitment when talking about a persistent campaign, otherwise it seems not worth it to me.

The second factor is that I really like the western front late war setting. 

I don't think the rules and structure are a bad thing, I think it is good to have that server out there - but it's a bit of an issue for me when I have limited play time.

 

Sure, I'll add - "I don't have time for TAW"

Edited May 5, 2020 by SCG_Wulfe

[40plus]

It's multiplayer....... even when I dip my toe into MP I do it solo. TAW does not work well for solo fliers.

Edited May 5, 2020 by pfrances

[SCG_Wulfe]

1 minute ago, pfrances said:

It's multiplayer.......

 

Fair enough, ?

 

Just wanted to get a sample of potential players, not those who do not participate in multiplayer. 

I realize this could be posted in the multiplayer forum or the TAW thread itself, but I think that would unfortunately miss a lot of worthwhile voices. 

 

 

Edited May 5, 2020 by SCG_Wulfe

[40plus]

Just now, SCG_Wulfe said:

 

Fair enough, ?

 

Just wanted to get a sample of potential players, not those who do not participate in multiplayer. 

 

 

 

Yeh, my initial response was rather terse. Added some further justification.

[Beazil]

Personally, and this is simply personally, I have a thing about the penalties.

I know it's been explained, and I respect the desire of the server administrators to create the environment they so choose.  In fact I applaud it.  

As I said in the thread for the server, someone's going to lose and that's plenty frustrating enough without getting a perverbial whack on the pee pee for it.  It's just not something that I enjoy, but I get it and support it.

 

I am only speaking for myself in this case.  I have squaddies who happily participate and they enjoy the server themselves.

Edited May 5, 2020 by JG51_Beazil

[Talon_]

[Barnacles]

37 minutes ago, Talon_ said:

What he said.

[SCG_Wulfe]

1 minute ago, 71st_AH_Barnacles said:

What he said.

 

Fair enough. I think I will open it up to multiple choice to get these opinions. 

Edited May 5, 2020 by SCG_Wulfe

[Velxra]

The vote should also include "not having a plane icon on the map view" for a more stress free experience. Because that is at least a big contributing factor for the reason why most NA players choose wings of liberty instead. 

Edited May 6, 2020 by Geronimo553

[QB.Shallot]

@Geronimo553 Pretty sure most NA players play CB, which is a hardcore server in terms of settings. 

[Velxra]

7 minutes ago, QB.Shallot said:

@Geronimo553 Pretty sure most NA players play CB, which is a hardcore server in terms of settings. 

 

They are also the only ones populated running the latest plane set consistently. Which is the biggest factor. 

[Garven]

Waiting for invisible planes to be fixed.

[SCG_Fenris_Wolf]

I'd like to see new ideas in TAW regarding the targets. It's the same like a year ago. We could have ships, frontline hospitals, varying defences, spotter aircrafts, or bomber raids. Rainy weather or snow too. Just a few examples from other servers. So I'm missing something like "New Features".

 

It's gotten so repetitive that I have started flying IL-2s to get enough thrill and new experiences. That should say something. Still love TAW.?

[Talisman]

Over scripted.  This is what puts me off.  That is why I voted too many rules/regulations.

 

Thanks for the poll.

 

Happy landings,

 

56RAF_Talisman

[SCG_Wulfe]

5 hours ago, 56RAF_Talisman said:

Over scripted.  This is what puts me off.  That is why I voted too many rules/regulations.

 

Thanks for the poll.

 

Happy landings,

 

56RAF_Talisman

 

 

When you say over-scripted, do you mean its too much of the same old tactics/application resulting in known effects?

 

Or, do you mean there is too much going on behind the scenes to want to keep track of it all? (what planes you have, what airfields you can spawn from, how many players a side can hold, etc)

 

Or, is is something else?

[TCW_Brzi_Joe]

Europe player with 2 obstacles for TAW:

1) login, and one user for 1 side - I hate it 

2) Free plane at airport can not be used, pilot must login on TAW internet page and look which plane he can take at airport - I hate that too.

 

[6./ZG26_Klaus_Mann]

It's Fighter Centric. I like Ground Attack and Bombing, but the Targets are set up in such a Way that they are essentially only Killing Zones for Fighters, the FLAK is Overpowered as Hell, the Fighter Jocks are Toxic as Hell.

[[SKY]BigB]

I marked the 3 life rule, and overall too many rules. Had two friends give up on TAW because of the lives / plane limitations.

 

TAW not being as popular in the NA timezone is a product of a few things I believe. Other servers are far more friendly to newer players, and there has been an influx of new players the last month or two. Additionally, I presume veteran NA players are more likely to play on Combat Box due to its plane set.

 

Most importantly, in general, people go where the players already are. As an American on the east coast, I've seen the server populations change with new players.

 

Combat Box is always full when I play. Wings stays well populated even through my evenings now. The Virtual Pilots server got most noticeable boost, and stays relevant until evenings for me now. That server offers something similar to the TAW experience without the hamstringing rules/restrictions.

 

[69th_Mobile_BBQ]

Where's the "TAW forum thread is a toxic poo flinging contest where any useful suggestions get buried by idiots arguing over trivialities" option?  

 

Edited May 6, 2020 by 69th_Mobile_BBQ

[RedKestrel]

As a point about 'too many rules and regulations', I literally just found out from reading the TAW thread that the three life rule only applies when you are on the side with more numbers (?), and you will be allowed to join if your side has lower player numbers. When did that even change? Has it been that way since the beginning? Are they still doing life losses proportional to side balance or did that get ditched?

I realize its a lot of work to put on the server but it seems like there is a big gap between what the rules currently are and what is on the site. Hunting through the forum posts is difficult, since, as @69th_Mobile_BBQ 80% of the thread is die hard red vs. blue players fighting over the most marginal of advantages and proposing yet more mechanics to try and correct player behaviour/balance/whatever to what they want. So even people like me who spend time on the forum have trouble keeping track of how things work. Its not that its hard to understand its another thing to keep track of and think about, and while you're in the game itself, and not dealing with the campaign meta, its not that much different than a good mission on another server.

Its fine to have a bunch of mechanics but there are these exceptions that have been added to improve balance or player numbers on the losing side that aren't well known or understood.

[Beazil]

2 hours ago, 69th_Mobile_BBQ said:

Where's the "TAW forum thread is a toxic poo flinging contest where any useful suggestions get buried by idiots arguing over trivialities" option?  

 

Gimmie a minute...

[O_Mollusc]

You left out the most likely criterion: I am easily startled, and not in need of a stressful environment.

Edited May 6, 2020 by O_Mollusc
Concept better expressed

[RedKestrel]

12 hours ago, O_Mollusc said:

You left out the most likely criterion: I am easily startled, and not in need of a stressful environment.

I need that option in the poll, I actually jump in my chair sometimes when I get bounced, scares my wife, kid, and cats something fierce.

[SharpeXB]

Unless something has changed, the reason I don’t play TAW is that the AAA guns are too super lethal. They dominate the game and make participation by players irrelevant. They shoot down any attackers over targets before the human players can intervene and they make attacking enemy targets suicidal. I know it’s supposed to encourage teamwork but it’s still ridiculous. I go online to play against other human players, not the AI. The idea that squads of human players are supposed to team up against the guns is silly since afaik WWII pilots didn’t do that. 

[RedKestrel]

5 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Unless something has changed, the reason I don’t play TAW is that the AAA guns are too super lethal. They dominate the game and make participation by players irrelevant. They shoot down any attackers over targets before the human players can intervene and they make attacking enemy targets suicidal. I know it’s supposed to encourage teamwork but it’s still ridiculous. I go online to play against other human players, not the AI. The idea that squads of human players are supposed to team up against the guns is silly since afaik WWII pilots didn’t do that. 

When I played TAW there were two ways to deal with the flak. Not sure if things have changed since then, I think there was some kind of update to gun dispersion and gunner tracking that changed how effective some of the flak was in the past year or so.

One was to go with a buddy and 'drag' the flak. Basically, one pilot flies in fast and close enough and 'triggers' the flak. The gun will focus on that plane until its out of range. If you keep your speed up, don't fly straight and level, and stay mostly perpendicular to the gun, you will usually not be hit. The second player could kill the flak guns with impunity while they were focused. Two fighters swapping in and out of this system could clear a big chunk of the flak guns on a target in minutes as long as they weren't interrupted. Once all the flak guns were cleared off a target you could follow up with bombers or attackers. The downside was it's a pretty 'gamey' approach, just leveraging quirks of the AI targeting routines.

The other way was to take a fast bomber like a Pe-2 or Ju-88, get up to a decent altitude, and make a max-speed dive into the target area. Ignore the flak, drop your bombs, and scoot home. If you are moving fast enough the flak won't wake up and hit you before you're on egress, unless you dive straight at a flak gun. With the current bomb DM being what it is, this is now a lot less effective, since its harder to be precise with this kind of attack and you really need precision now to kill stuff with bombs. But this is the less gamey approach, as it was definitely considered stupid to attack a target on more than one pass IRL due to the flak danger. For attackers like the Il-2, it is basically impossible to get going fast enough to reliably avoid the flak. If that was the only attack plane you had left, you either had to soak up the damage or only attack targets where the flak had been cleared.

I don't think there's a problem with building targets that benefit from a systematic approach to ground attack, but having sniper AI running the guns forces you into meta-gamey attack types. It's possible to have enough flak on a target that you have to fly smart not to get hit, without it being suicidal.

Because TAW is a campaign system that runs 24 hours a day, the flak has to be deadly to prevent a few organized players from rolling entire ground targets with impunity when  numbers on the server are low. Even with the deadly flak it happened on occasion where a whole day's worth of work from 40 players on a side was undone by strikes from 5 guys on off-peak times. It's a kind of design limitation to the persistent, 24/7 campaign - its also what causes the constant balance wrangling, because it is non-trivial to switch sides and even things out, and losing one or two key maps has an impact for weeks of the campaign. Take all the salt of losing on a given map or in a given sortie and dial it up to 11 because it just keeps going. 
 

 

[Talisman]

20 hours ago, SCG_Wulfe said:

 

 

When you say over-scripted, do you mean its too much of the same old tactics/application resulting in known effects?

 

Or, do you mean there is too much going on behind the scenes to want to keep track of it all? (what planes you have, what airfields you can spawn from, how many players a side can hold, etc)

 

Or, is is something else?

 

Too many mechanisms and rules trying to control what individual players and squads can and can't do.  This is hard enough for individuals and small numbers of players, but even harder for very large squads that want to get together in the same aircraft, to the same specification, from the same airfield.  Just too restrictive, not natural and over directed across the board.  Almost suffocating in its control.  I am a mature and serious minded participant in IL-2 MP, but even I find it too stifling (too constraining and oppressive for enjoyment).  Please note that these are just my personal feelings and others will, of course, will feel differently, but some might feel the same.

 

Of course, it is up to the server admins what they do and I am not against having a few simple rules.  For example, the 3 life rule is fine by me, its all the other endless complications that take the joy away.

 

Happy landings,

 

56RAF_Talisman

[SCG_Wulfe]

1 hour ago, 56RAF_Talisman said:

 

Too many mechanisms and rules trying to control what individual players and squads can and can't do.  This is hard enough for individuals and small numbers of players, but even harder for very large squads that want to get together in the same aircraft, to the same specification, from the same airfield.  Just too restrictive, not natural and over directed across the board.  Almost suffocating in its control.  I am a mature and serious minded participant in IL-2 MP, but even I find it too stifling (too constraining and oppressive for enjoyment).  Please note that these are just my personal feelings and others will, of course, will feel differently, but some might feel the same.

 

Of course, it is up to the server admins what they do and I am not against having a few simple rules.  For example, the 3 life rule is fine by me, its all the other endless complications that take the joy away.

 

Happy landings,

 

56RAF_Talisman

 

 

This is very reasonable and I think hits at a lot of the root issues that have turned a large number of people and squads off. 

 

The question is what to do about it, while retaining the essence of what makes TAW unique and special. 

 

I personally think the ability to gain and lose planes is part of the unique and special appeal of TAW (contributes to varied planes in the air as well as the incentive to bring them and your pilot home) but I can see how it would interfere with squadrons desire to fly together in the same type. I also get that this mechanic is simply not for everyone. 

 

 I'd like to think the biggest hurdles are the player population caps and 3 life rule for the majority.  These things would be easy to undo and honestly wouldn't change the character of TAW drastically. Heck, it's the way it used to be. 

Edited May 7, 2020 by SCG_Wulfe

[SharpeXB]

1 hour ago, RedKestrel said:

One was to go with a buddy and 'drag' the flak. Basically, one pilot flies in fast and close enough and 'triggers' the flak. The gun will focus on that plane until its out of range. If you keep your speed up, don't fly straight and level, and stay mostly perpendicular to the gun, you will usually not be hit. The second player could kill the flak guns with impunity while they were focused. Two fighters swapping in and out of this system could clear a big chunk of the flak guns on a target in minutes as long as they weren't interrupted. Once all the flak guns were cleared off a target you could follow up with bombers or attackers. The downside was it's a pretty 'gamey' approach, just leveraging quirks of the AI targeting routines.

Right but that all is like a SEAD strike which as far as I know wasn't done in WWII. fighters didn't go down trying to knock out AAA guns. Bombers just soldiered on and flew through it, suffering accordingly. Again if I wanted to play attacking AI guns I could do that in SP. and yes, it's "gamey". And sure it caters towards teams and I don't play on teams.

Edited May 7, 2020 by SharpeXB

[RedKestrel]

38 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Right but that all is like a SEAD strike which as far as I know wasn't done in WWII. fighters didn't go down trying to knock out AAA guns. Bombers just soldiered on and flew through it, suffering accordingly. Again if I wanted to play attacking AI guns I could do that in SP. and yes, it's "gamey". And sure it caters towards teams and I don't play on teams.

From my reading, there were attempts to suppress AA in certain mission types. The best example I can think of is the RAF during shipping strikes in the North Sea;one group of attack aircraft (usually Beaufighters) would strafe any anti-aircraft equipped ships in the convoy to suppress AA, while rocket or bomb equipped attackers (either Beaus or Mosquitoes) would make their attack runs on the larger cargo ships. 

Also, AA nests and emplacements were common targets of opportunity during cross-channel fighter-bomber raids  in Western Europe, at least from my readings. But this wasn't a concerted effort to clear AA from an area, these were basically offensive air patrols. They shot up radio towers, power stations, whatever they found, and as far as I can tell almost never made a second pass. The point was to have disruptive nuisance raids, not any kind of large scale offensive.

But aside from some narrow circumstances I don't think we see organized SEAD attacks in WWII, not to the scale we see in modern conflicts, and I haven't found attacks like that to be necessary with targets on other servers. Keep your speed up, don't dive straight at a gun, and fly evasively on egress, and you can make multiple runs on the target without getting hard hit.

 

[SCG_Wulfe]

2 hours ago, RedKestrel said:

I don't think there's a problem with building targets that benefit from a systematic approach to ground attack, but having sniper AI running the guns forces you into meta-gamey attack types. It's possible to have enough flak on a target that you have to fly smart not to get hit, without it being suicidal.

Because TAW is a campaign system that runs 24 hours a day, the flak has to be deadly to prevent a few organized players from rolling entire ground targets with impunity when  numbers on the server are low. Even with the deadly flak it happened on occasion where a whole day's worth of work from 40 players on a side was undone by strikes from 5 guys on off-peak times. It's a kind of design limitation to the persistent, 24/7 campaign - its also what causes the constant balance wrangling, because it is non-trivial to switch sides and even things out, and losing one or two key maps has an impact for weeks of the campaign. Take all the salt of losing on a given map or in a given sortie and dial it up to 11 because it just keeps going. 
 

 

 

I wonder if a solution might be the following:

 

-Change flak back to what players would expect from other servers/is historical (ie. not all that effective)

 

-Scale back in the behind the scenes scripts the actual effect of destroying a defense or tank column. (ie. the same defense/column will respawn in the same position the next map, over and over again until a threshold is reached where it has been destroyed enough times. Scale that threshold so that when the server is busy, the map can still be moved effectively, but when the server has a very low population, the net damage of destroying the position is proportional.)

 

This would allow people to enjoy the act of going and bombing things without ridiculous flak to deal with while also preventing over-powerful groups of small players

[SharpeXB]

^ sounds like some good ideas. I like the concept of the server generally, even with all the rules, I just wanted the action to be more decided by players than AI

[Talisman]

3 hours ago, SCG_Wulfe said:

 

 

This is very reasonable and I think hits at a lot of the root issues that have turned a large number of people and squads off. 

 

The question is what to do about it, while retaining the essence of what makes TAW unique and special. 

 

I personally think the ability to gain and lose planes is part of the unique and special appeal of TAW (contributes to varied planes in the air as well as the incentive to bring them and your pilot home) but I can see how it would interfere with squadrons desire to fly together in the same type. I also get that this mechanic is simply not for everyone. 

 

 I'd like to think the biggest hurdles are the player population caps and 3 life rule for the majority.  These things would be easy to undo and honestly wouldn't change the character of TAW drastically. Heck, it's the way it used to be. 

 

For me, the gain and lose planes restriction is the biggest reason to be put off trying to operate a large squadron of 12 to 14 pilots for repeated operational sorties together in the same aircraft to the same specification as a squadron would mainly operate for real.

 

Happy landings,

 

56RAF_Talisman

[SCG_Wulfe]

3 minutes ago, 56RAF_Talisman said:

 

For me, the gain and lose planes restriction is the biggest reason to be put off trying to operate a large squadron of 12 to 14 pilots for repeated operational sorties together in the same aircraft to the same specification as a squadron would mainly operate for real.

 

Happy landings,

 

56RAF_Talisman

 

Fair enough. 

[SCG_Syn]

Please add "Flak is stupid"

[Giovanni_Giorgio]

On 5/6/2020 at 3:57 PM, 69th_Mobile_BBQ said:

Where's the "TAW forum thread is a toxic poo flinging contest where any useful suggestions get buried by idiots arguing over trivialities" option?  

 

Gold.