It seems like part of the reason so few people are playing at any given time is because nobody wants to play if only two other people are playing. It's sort of a circular dichotomy. There's nobody to play with, so nobody gets on and plays, which leads to there being nobody to play with, so nobody gets on to play.
"Time to play some Pawn Tactics! Oh, only three other people on the lobby who all seem to be AFK, and one guy capping a flag over and over by himself on Layers? Nevermind. I'll go watch YouTube or play my xbox."
This could partially be broken by adding AI enemies to supplement real players. Sort of like how they do in Star Wars Battlefront. That way people don't mind getting on and playing with only two other people, because they know it will still actually be 6v6 instead of 1v2 even though only 3 of those players are real people, instead of just two players spawn camping the team with one player and capping their flag over and over.
More people willing to get on and play regardless of how many other people are online will lead to more people wanting to get online. Like a reverse version of the dichotomy I previously mentioned.
I know writing AI software is really hard, even for an AI doing something as simple as being an opponent in a video game. And it will probably take a long time of tweaking to get it to work right. Sometimes the AI will be too good, or not good enough, or be too predictable, etc etc.
But if the goal is to revive this game and get people playing, we have to break the cycle of nobody wanting to play because nobody else is playing.
"Time to play some Pawn Tactics! Oh, only three other people on the lobby who all seem to be AFK, and one guy capping a flag over and over by himself on Layers? Nevermind. I'll go watch YouTube or play my xbox."
This could partially be broken by adding AI enemies to supplement real players. Sort of like how they do in Star Wars Battlefront. That way people don't mind getting on and playing with only two other people, because they know it will still actually be 6v6 instead of 1v2 even though only 3 of those players are real people, instead of just two players spawn camping the team with one player and capping their flag over and over.
More people willing to get on and play regardless of how many other people are online will lead to more people wanting to get online. Like a reverse version of the dichotomy I previously mentioned.
I know writing AI software is really hard, even for an AI doing something as simple as being an opponent in a video game. And it will probably take a long time of tweaking to get it to work right. Sometimes the AI will be too good, or not good enough, or be too predictable, etc etc.
But if the goal is to revive this game and get people playing, we have to break the cycle of nobody wanting to play because nobody else is playing.
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