Get my 2 cents in I suppose
Last round I ended up quiting simply because there seemed to be no point to it after awhile...to many routes to keep control of and not enough time in the day. As with this round its going the same way...all you do is add routes and start the daily price drops to keep up. Only reason I like this round better is because its with aircraft I actually know something about.
As already mentioned probably more then once this game is just a matter of who has the lowest price...not really competitive. Seems like those who fly to the top in the beginning stay there and the rest grow at their own slower rate. I've been trying to grow but after the first 3 days into this round I slipped to the 24-26th range of ranking in Asia and have stayed there since regardless of how many new routes I open or how much my DOP grows...everyone around me is growing at about the same speed. Theres no competition...seems like at some point you hit a spot in the ranks and hang there. It gets quite boring just editing routes every day. €1 can mean the difference between a 25% load and a 100% load. Theres no in between. Once you get several hundred routes going who really has time to keep up editing to keep a profit. It would be a 24 hour job...I've set a price to a 100% load and not 2 seconds later that same route was back to 30% because of €1 :x
It drives some people away the way its set up. There really needs to be some improvements. Needs to have something like airline reputation, passenger to hub ratio....say you start out at a small 600K passenger airport as a base and make it your main hub, if you have 200 different destinations served then the passengers handled would climb due to connecting flights from that hub. With this implemented its possible to limit the number of airlines that can base themselves at an airport. Right now its unlimited till the gates run out...50 airlines could base themselves at say LHR. Real life this could never happen. Bring in options to grow an airport...implement cargo, build a cargo terminal, etc....not only buy gates but runway slots as well....so build new runway options.
Theres a ton of things that could make this game more realistic and put some fun into it for a change. Why waist time editing 100 routes because someone dropped the price a couple bucks....then repeat an hour later...this whole time not really gaining anything. At least airline reputation would have a lot of impact on things. Relying on your own setup with aircraft configurations, build a private terminal for your airline, alliance connections....all builds into your reputation letting you set your prices to that level but yet have to compete with the other airlines. Better reputation the more passengers you get and the more profit you make....bad reputation, have fun going bankrupt.
Its just little things that could be worked in eventually or at least make a world like that. Many people I knew left last round and never returned...if the game had more of a REAL competitive factor to it people might just hang around and enjoy....not continuously b*tch and moan because of the current over saturated mess its in now. When the only factor is the ticket price thats just gets boring...also...people at the biggest airports can set the highest prices at the start of a route...in most real cases it costs more to start a trip at a small airport then a large one, not as many connection options and generally small aircraft limiting available seats.
Theres more to that idea but I just got called into work so have to cut it here :cry: