Not sure where best to put this but wanted to share my experience about this game.
First off, I do find the game strangely addictive and enjoyable. There are many aspects I really enjoy, the real time pace and shear amount of data to analyse to name a couple.
However, there are some things that also make the game unbearable (for me anyway)
The amount of traffic on completely unrealistic routes. Just take a look at the amount of daily flights between any UK airport and LHR - e.g. 40+ daily flights from Bristol to LHR
Relatively high ORS ratings for routed that include 1 stop. In most cases they are way more expensive and longer however the difference in ORS rating is really not large enough. Direct routed should always be substantially more favourable in my view (unless multiple connection flights is cheaper - as in the real world)
At the start of the game, people who have "worked out" the game mechanics make an obscene amount of money which makes competing very difficult
It is far too cheap to operate from multiple main hubs which means that there is always a risk that a major player will come in and completely kill you off - which is what has happened to me now. I am sitting in a 6 bar airport operating just over 400 flights then in 1 day a major airline comes in and opens over 1500 flights with large aircraft and complete floods the market. This is completely unrealistic. I have enjoyed some competition on many routes and adjusting you service to get the market share on a route was fun, however when you are suddenly swamped on every route there is no point.
On the last point, I can see why slot blocking would happen - it is really the only way to stop someone coming in and completely killing you market - not saying I agree with slot blocking at all btw.
Anyway, my intention here is to give my experience of the game - I am not accusing anyone or looking for an argument.
With some tweaking I think this would be a really good game.
AS prefers more frequency over more capacity, more like American market. When you add more frequency of the flights, most likely you are taking more slots, so is it more like the 'slot blocking' that you address at the end? ;) There is one point you stop adding more destinations and start to add more frequency. It won't be an issue if you only have hundreds of flight, but what about players with thousands flights? I know adding with narrows and wide bodies isn't defined as 'slot blocking' in game, but it is 'blocking', or taking, all the slots. (More like 'blocking' the airport without any 'illegal' act :P )
There are people taking middle east airlines because they think those airlines are better, and the price is necessarily to be the cheapest, so we do have that market in the real world. The only thing might be able to improve is the price and service ratio. There are just too many percentage of Premium PAX in AS.
You can't really blame people are better than you, so i don't see anyway you can deal with that. :)
A lot of players still survive under that condition. If you have a better network and good services, i don't think other players can just come in and completely 'kill' your airline. If you can't win the fight, maybe try a cooperation. Might not be what you want, but at least you survive. :D
The only reason the Bristol - LHR route works, is probably because BRS don't have a player. So all the passengers from BRS, connects to LHR - instead of flying direct. I can almost promise you great succes if you started in BRS, and flew directly to many of the competitors destinations.
I know that AS isen’t perfect. Far from it. But when you learn the aspects of the game, it becomes a part of the challenge, and gameplay.
I’m sure that AS will listen to your constructive critisism. For once it’s nice to see someone give some ideas why he’s not satisfied, instead of the usual ‘K thanks bye’.
I also appreciate your constructive criticism and suggestions. Some of your points are very valid points while I don't agree in some others but I can understand your feelings.
It would be great if you would give AS a second chance. Some players here can help you to understand more of the mechanisms - and can also advice where you could start without having a company swapping 1500 flights in one day (wow, that player must have a lot of time).
AirlineSim is not for everybody and nobody forces you to stay, personally I also left and came back when I started playing the game and I was in the same void that you seem to be in. Or If you are just bored with the game I fully respect your decision in leaving, when you dont like something you should not do. Good luck and good bye!
@TWAAir - My reason for "blocking" would be to stop a huge airline coming in and taking over most of the slots in 1 swoop - which is what happened to me. And believe me, I know there are tons of players better than me and I don't begrudge them for that! I know it might sound like sour grapes from my part but it really isn't...hehe
@ Banff - You are probably right - I guess it just seems weird to imagine seeing that many flights on those routes.
@highscore - I work as software developer and user feedback (although sometimes wrong...hehe) can be useful - which is what I was aiming for here. Yeah I mean the growth of some of the companies is amazing really, you just hope and prey they dont decide to turn up your hub!
@CBE - Dont worry, I don't feel like I am being held against my will. Maybe I don't have the time to be really successful, I am not sure. Maybe next time I will get more involved with the community to get some advice.
There is a lot of knowledge in the forums and if you spend one full week just reading forums, going back years and years of threads, you will get a very good understanding of the dynamics and then it’s just a small trial and error to test run your newly acquired knowledge.
However, there are some things that also make the game unbearable (for me anyway)
The amount of traffic on completely unrealistic routes. Just take a look at the amount of daily flights between any UK airport and LHR - e.g. 40+ daily flights from Bristol to LHR
I think the issue is that traffic isn't quite that granular - afaict the lowest level entity it's worked out by is per region (so in Canada you might have each airport in Quebec sending, say, 50% of traffic to [airports in Quebec relative to traffic], 25% to Ontario, 10 % to Manitoba etc; but since with the UK mainland (or Germany, France etc) there is just the country itself, rather than domestic traffic being weighted towards places a certain distance from each other, you do get a lot of actual demand being between places that noone sane would fly between - London to Bristol, Southampton, Birmingham etc.
Probably to fix this under the current model you'd have to make a whole bunch new regions to partition traffic a certain way...
I'm currently taking a break as well. To me, AS is in a development stage that makes it frustrating to play. There are some great new features that weren't backported to old servers and there are different pricing models that either make (1) shorthaul insanely profitable (Aspern) or (2) shorthaul have irritatingly low margins when the ORS is low (Ellinikon). Then, the fact that the game really doesn't have dynamic markets; the stock market and airplane market are complete jokes. Additionally, the passengers are completely opposite of real life passengers: an airline run like Spirit or Allegiant can't thrive (dare I say can't survive?) in AS, but airlines that operate like the bankrupt airlines of yesteryear make fistfuls of money. I've been checking in, would love to hop in someday, but the temporary servers don't have much appeal to me (although I understand why they are appealing to martin). Someday, the hard decision is going to have to be made to shut down older servers.
Thanks a lot for your exit feedback, keneki. I appreciate it.
Most of the issues are "systemic", that is, without changing the general character of the game, they are hard to fix. Let's take the "huge player takes over hub" problem: The game needs to enable players to make money and to progress. The only way to prevent a huge player from just swamping another hub would be a.) to massively reduce the income of large airlines in some way and/or b.) to add enormous fixed costs when opening a new hub. Neither of these is feasible or realistic, imo. But most importantly, it would take out the fun for many players who see their purpose in AS in boundless growth. It's something I don't like myself, to be honest. I prefer small to medium-sized airlines in every respect. But without drastically limiting the games's options or implementing a (possibly realistic) slow growth model I don't see how to counteract them.
I left AS because of the sudden huge airlines that would show up and take over everything. I started in Pearls the same day it came out, over 6 months I had a good airline with 3 hubs and was happily growing. Then one day someone comes in with 500 airplanes out of no where and opens hubs all over the US running standard seating at below default price. All the markets flooded and i went from 95% load factor to less the 40%. The more i dropped the prices to compete the less money I made and had to start returning aircraft. Before you knew it these "ultra low fare" airlines went into an alliance and took over the entire Pearls server. Everyone bailed and no one ever figured out how these new players came in and bought 500 airplanes in there first week. Now that I came back I'm hoping they are not around anymore
Thanks a lot for your exit feedback, keneki. I appreciate it.
Most of the issues are “systemic”, that is, without changing the general character of the game, they are hard to fix. Let’s take the “huge player takes over hub” problem: The game needs to enable players to make money and to progress. The only way to prevent a huge player from just swamping another hub would be a.) to massively reduce the income of large airlines in some way and/or b.) to add enormous fixed costs when opening a new hub. Neither of these is feasible or realistic, imo. But most importantly, it would take out the fun for many players who see their purpose in AS in boundless growth. It’s something I don’t like myself, to be honest. I prefer small to medium-sized airlines in every respect. But without drastically limiting the games’s options or implementing a (possibly realistic) slow growth model I don’t see how to counteract them.
Hi Martin, I did not notice your post until now. I understand the predicament and I wish I had a credible suggestion. The idea of making additional hubs extremely expensive could potentially work, maybe as a new game world. Whether or not there would be much support for this I don’t know. It may encourage a new kind of thinking and co-operation to succeed. I would be up for that!
This game is at it's most enjoyable when you first start out and begin the growth phase. And the way to keep that feeling longer in big countries would be to drastically increase the costs of adding that new hub. We should have to "buy" our slots up front and anything over 100 in an airport should indicate a Hub location. At that point the price should increase drastically to reflect the need for jetways/etc.
Obviously the first location should come with like 500 slots (you can only open if the location has those slots free). Increasing the cost structure for large airlines is an imperative for this game. And each new successive hub should incrementally increase in cost to the point that opening up that 10th hub has less appeal than opening up your 2nd. Doing this would make dominating that much more fun and would make the middle to late game more entertaining. As it is once you've become the #1 airline in your area and have 80% of your domestic market the game gets boring. And you wouldn't have gotten their in the first place if you had increasing costs against your local competition. I'm having a seriously hard time trying to focus on my Canadian airline on Devau yet I can't just let it go since I put so many hour in getting it to that point. But I've now had it on autopilot for months and I'm sitting on a hoard of cash.
Even the largest airline in the real world by passenger volume only (ONLY?) has 10 domestic hubs and 3 international. (Delta Airlines)
