Let’s discuss game mechanics

[SAir]

I love the game, but I’m losing interest in playing it because of an issue I think should be number 1 on the devs’ list of problems to solve - long landing times.

My intention here is not to have a complain fest, but start a structured conversation and provide/invite ideas. As you can tell from the below, I’ve given this one a lot of thought and so want to be part of the solution.

I mostly play in IAD so I’m drawing on my experience there for the numbers, but from what I can tell it’s an issue in other parts of the game.

The problem

Landing take much too long, which results in them being the only bottleneck once you reach a certain point in the game. ATC barely help as the maximum acceleration is 6%. As a result:

1. It takes forever to clear a landing queue - if possible at all. Currently, an airport can only handle just under 60 landings per hour (assuming no takeoffs on the runway). In fact, depending on your contract count and mix you can end up in a situation where it is mathematically impossible to clear the landing queue because the planes return so fast (and the timer starts upon pushback vs. takeoff).

2. You’re always staring at an empty airport. I’ve run the numbers and at IAD, you could theoretically handle about 500-600 planes per hour if you build out all the stalls (taking into consideration taxi, chock and handling times). But you can only land about 55 planes per hour. That means a fully built airport would be about 10% utilized! In fact, it’s very difficult to handle more than about a dozen planes at once unless you sandbag the handling somehow. There is actually no point building out more than about 15-20 stalls - out of 125!

3. The game becomes too easy. Because landings are the bottleneck, nothing else matters and there is basically nothing left to manage. At IAD, I’ve never run out of handling crew for example, even by maxing out the crew on every flight.

All of this makes for an unsatisfying playing experience.

Why devs should fix this

I’ve seen some users mention that devs want it this way, because it increases playing time. That’s not the right way to think about it however:

1. There is no point in spending in the game if landings are the bottleneck. This is true at several levels. First, if the gates aren’t utilized, there is no point in building more stalls, buying more equipment, or getting more handling crew. Second, if the planes aren’t going to be able to land (or will take forever doing so), there is no point in getting more planes and/or contracts. Third, if players knows that large airports are just going to be runway constrained, there isn’t much point in unlocking the top airports (LHR and SYD) because it’s going to lead to a similar unsatisfying experience. This game is monetized by people spending in the game, not necessarily by people spending more time playing it because there are no ads (thank God - I would instantly stop playing if there was).

2. It turns people off the game. If the playing experience is unsatisfying, people will just get bored and stopped playing it. It’s not a quality experience.

Of course there are people that keep spending and playing despite this. But I can guarantee the game would be a lot more profitable if this was fixed.

The root cause

The issue is that handling times are much more accelerated vs. the real world than landing times (and taxiing times). These ratios need to be brought in sync to have a more realistic gaming experience.

I actually collected some data using Flightradar at IAD to compare the game to reality (because, you know, I was waiting for my planes to land).

Landing times

Landings are accelerated by about 1.5x in the game vs. real life.

Category	Real world time	Game time	Ratio
S	00:01:29	0:01:03	1.4
M	00:01:34	0:01:02	1.5
L	00:02:07	0:01:11	1.8

Taxiing

Taxiing to the gate takes about 4-5 minutes in real life and about 2-3 minutes in the game. So the game is accelerated by about about 1.7-2.5x.

Handling

The game is accelerated by 7-8 times for M/L planes - and about 15 times for S planes!

I’m comparing here the time the planes actually spent at the gates in real life vs. the maximum “on time” handling time in the game.

Category	Real world time	Game time	Ratio
S	01:26:00	00:05:45	14.9
M	01:42:20	00:12:22	8.3
L	02:05:00	00:18:36	6.7

Solutions

There are a variety of solutions, and some of them seem like very easy fixes. The first one in particular seems like a no-brainer.

1. Move the landing clearance trigger earlier. Currently, the next plane is cleared to land when the preceding one crosses the runway holding line. A landing in the game takes about 60-65 sec. Of that, about 15 sec. are from clearance to touchdown, 15-20 sec. are touchdown to switching from “arrival” to “taxi” status, 10-15 sec. are taxi to exiting the runway, then about 10-15 seconds are from exit to clearing the line. Just move the trigger for clearance to when the plane goes from “arrival” to “taxi” and now landings would take 30-35 seconds - you’ve now doubled capacity! And since the approach and taxi on runway phases take about as long, you won’t actually have two planes on the runway at the same time (or for only a very short time that most people won’t notice/care about). This seems like it would be super easy to implement.

2. Make the landing sequence faster/shorter. Obvious one, but I appreciate it’s harder to do while keeping things looking smooth. A solution would be to cut the approach to touchdown time to about 5 seconds (plane appears later) and speed up the taxing on runway so that this also takes about 5 seconds. If you implement that with the above, landings now take 20-25 seconds and you’ve nearly tripled capacity vs. today.

3. Allow landings on multiple runways. Another obvious one that has been discussed before. Appreciate that’s harder to do and doesn’t solve the issue in most airports in the game.

4. Allow ATC to land planes when out of the game. The clock keeps ticking even after we exit the game. Planes could keep landing during that time, so that when we pick up the game again at least we have more planes ready to handle and fewer ready to land.

5. Make roundtrip clock start upon takeoff vs. pushback. This has been discussed before and is just common sense, but it would also help with this issue as planes wouldn’t start re-entering the landing queue so quickly after handling. So you could actually clear the queue.

6. Slow down handling times. This one is going to be a bit controversial because it’s going to slow down the actual game. But if you’re looking for large airports to actually be utilized this has to be done to some extent. I think it would be hard for a runway to handle more than about 4 planes/minute without it looking very wonky. That means 240 planes/hour capacity. IAD has 4 runways so if you activated several of them you could eliminate the landing bottleneck since you’d exceed the 500-600 planes/hour ground handling capacity. But the other airports only have 2 runways usable at once, so you’d be at max 480 planes/hr. (assuming no takeoffs at all). You’d still have under-utilized airports - LHR can do up to 1,100-1,200/hour. The good thing is I don’t think you need to lengthen handling times that much for the game to be more in sync. Say you got landings down to about 3 aircraft/minute/runway as per the above and implemented multiple runways. Something like the numbers below would give you a much more balanced airport. Really you’d be slowing down the S planes the most, which might impact fun early on in the game, but you can address that by giving players more contracts to start with. The fact that you can handle an S in like 5 minutes today is ridiculous anyway.

Category	Time/aircraft today	Suggested time/aircraft
Landing	00:01:05	00:00:19
Handling - S	00:09:45	00:15:38
Handling - M	00:16:22	00:18:36
Handling - L	00:22:36	00:22:44

[AJHP333]

I am happy with everything in the game, my airports are always full and everyone lands and I manage the takeoffs manually. Good luck to you.

[carlsberg72]

While very interesting, you are missing a ton of issues that arise if you change it, which I have already explained in a previous post.

1. Landing times from 1:05 to 0:19 so basically you want to see gray flashes down the screen on landing. Got it.
2. Timing of departures. Real life departures start from the gate not takeoff. So devs have this correct.
3. If you suddenly have a ton of planes at the gate. You will run out of equipment and handlers very quickly. I have over 150 at MCT and it’s not enough to handle them. So you would have to handle that too.

So basically you are asking for a complete rewrite of the game functionality, the concept of the game was throughput. Not a ton of aircraft sitting idly doing nothing at an airport making it look busier than it actually is. Which is what my MCT looks like because don’t have the infrastructure. While your ideas may have merit. I don’t think it’s solely the #1 problem here. Sorry

[carlsberg72]

In addition, LHR is capped around 45 arrivals per hour and that’s one of the busiest 2 runway airports in the world.

I think something extra above 6% is worth considering. But I doubt anything as drastic as above will likely be considered. They had the chance when 2.0 was released…

[T3X45ranger]

I and many others agree with OP. If none of the other ideas are viable (especially landing time minus the high-speed exit), then at least the increase in handling time. That’s just the thing, the game is built as it is to make the airport look LESS busy than it actually is because of the light speed handling times. Attention span of impatient players and grinders? Sure. But like I’ve suggested before, you could increase them in a subtle way and have options available to handle them as fast as current, so that everyone is happy, i.e lengthen the on time handling with minimal workers substantially, but have the handling time with max workers be the same as it already is.
I probably don’t need to point out that increasing the handling times as I suggest could increase motivation to use GP/SP and the player spending on the game.

[LeChonk]

In my opinion handling times should scale with the size of airports, the handling times at airports like LHR and MCT feel way to low and make them hard to fill but on the other hand airports like INN quickly become snoozefests of waiting around with nothing to do as you wait 5 minutes for the next plane to handle

[ukplanespotter757]

There’s a common trend we’ve had since Day 1 with large airports and either the taxi times or the emptiness of them. In my opinion, a lot of it boils down to one thing, and that’s the lack of high speed exits.

Just doing that would get aircraft off the runway a few seconds quicker, ultimately speeding things up in general.

To add to this, airports like LHR also have exits which aren’t used when they really should be, I made this diagram the other day, and it’s pretty evident one of the exits towards T4 isn’t being used and some stands on the remote stand island for M planes going for a full length like L/X planes.

[Pizza_711]

I think we are all forgetting that the devs said I. The q&a thay are planning to make high speed exits actually “high speed” in the near future so let’s see how that goes

[ukplanespotter757]

Yeah, it finally got mentioned which is good, but until we get it, the lack of the, will remain a pretty major issue in terms of the traffic flow, other than the fact it was mentioned as a future project there’s nothing more to go off for it for now.

[LeChonk]

@Pizza_711

The q&a thay are planning to make high speed exits actually “high speed”

SXM, PRG and MCT players

[Teddythefire]

SXM doesn’t have high speed exits. IAD, SYD, NGO, and LEJ have them though.

[ukplanespotter757]

LHR as well.

[Krankenwart]

At the beginning of my “WOA career”, I addressed exactly the same points. Over time, I’ve realised the following and so I’ve put an end to the topic (even if high-speed exits would still be a big gain!).

It depends on how you play. If you’re playing with IRL airlines, it would be damn cool if Heathrow also looked like Heathrow, namely completely full. But a landing has to look like a landing and not like a timelapse.

I now play LHR every day with almost 500 player-to-player contracts and after a few hours you’re glad when they’ve all been processed. You don’t hang in front of the device non-stop, but leave your smartphone and the tower manager fills the airport. Every 30-45 minutes planes will be processed and the airport will look quite full.

I understand your point, but the only option would be an optional realistic mode. But I don’t think that will come in the next few years.

[Pizza_711]

Pre tower manager, the empty airport thing used to annoy me, but now, I can just leave the approach manager on for an hour or so while I do other things, and by the time I get back, even an airport like lhr is 60-80% full and its just smooth flow from there

[SAir]

Some thoughtful contributions here - adding my responses.

@carlsberg72

Answering your points in turn.

1. This would make landings look like a blur. First, that’s not necessarily true. To the point above you could get the landings times down to about 0:30-0:35 if you just cleared the next plane once the previous one has decelerated. Same approach and rollout. And you could get it to 0:20 or so if you shortened the approach phase a bit and accelerated the taxi. Second, frankly I think more important than a landing looking like a landing is an airport looking like an airport.

2. Real life departure clocks start from the gate. That’s true for one-way flights, but we’re talking return trips here. It’s obviously physically impossible for a plane to be back and ready to land before it has taken off, yet this what the game allows it just happened to me this morning (again).

3. Suddenly you have a ton of planes at the gate. Yes, that’s the point. From the game developers’ perspective, you actually want that and for people to spend more on equipment and handlers. You may need to increase the limit on how much equipment people can buy but that’s an easy fix. It may also be worth giving people more than 1 handler per new stall to address this but that’s another point. To be clear, I (and others) don’t want the airport to appear busier, we want them to be busier. We can already make them appear busier by just letting them fill in and not handling the planes.

4. It’s a complete rewrite of the game. Well, no. Many of my solutions are easy fixes. And if the concept of the game is throughput then something that increases throughput is by definition 100% aligned with the concept of the game.

@ukplanespotter757

I think high-speed exits are worth exploring (and I would put that in the “speed up the sequence” category), but I don’t think it’s the highest ROI solution. A landing takes about 60-65 sec. today and of that about 30-35 is pre-taxi. Say you halved the taxi time, a landing would now take 45-50 sec. You’ve increased throughput by 20-30% or so. But I can see it being a lot of work because you presumably have to go airport-by-airport and plane-by-plane to reprogram this. The other options like moving the clearance trigger earlier seem to give a greater increase for less work.

@LeChonk

I think varying handling time by airport is a good idea. I don’t know if there are knock-on effects on the rest of the game though? For one it might change the strategy of which planes are best at each airport. But that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.

@Krankenwart

Interesting take. I think though it supports the point though that the AI planes return too fast.

[CJ_RVWilliams]

I agree that the landing time has some issues. At LEJ for example it seems to take 5 minutes before you can even play the airport at all waiting for planes to land.

I’m also skeptical of making handling times longer overall. Right now, with most of my airports maxed, I struggle to see the point in playing very often. Sure, I can get more Wollars to buy more planes, etc… but I have no need to do so. It doesn’t benefit me in any way except to make the airport take longer which I don’t really want it to do. I don’t need more SP either. I could stop playing for the rest of the year and never need to replenish my SP while redeeming 17 GP per week (and still have half of what I have now left over lol).

I was hoping when the dev logs came out about alliances that these would come soon to help alleviate this issue, but it seems like the devs aren’t very far on it as a feature based on the answers they appeared to give in the summary of the last dev Q&A on the discord.

But something needs to be done to keep this game interesting and give players goals once airports are maxed out before a drastic change like this to core gameplay is undertaken by the devs imo. Wether that’s adding a repeatable level to the airport passes (I’ve played games that do this, and pick a random reward from the levels every time you complete it), daily / weekly / monthly challenges with new rewards such as unique livery designs, discounted plains, etc, or something new to encourage us to do more than park planes at maxed out airports, that to me is the real gameplay issue this game faces.

[T3X45ranger]

For some of this at least, it sounds like there will be loads more mini-games, so that could alleviate the lack of drive/fun.

[theairplanefanatic]

Does anybody know how to get planes without getting them as rewards

[Rocky-Mountain-Air]

Personally, aside from a few minor tweaks, I think the gameplay works well.

I believe that WOA has two categories of enthusiasts… 1) those who play it for the graphics and realism via the camera views; and 2) those who primarily use the 2D view to efficiently manage flights to get XP to progress through the levels.

That being said, someone in the first group wants the game to be as realistic as possible and are concerned with details such as landing gear tilts, how passenger board flights, camera angles, etc. But with that comes a desire that the speed of how planes land, taxi and take off look realistic.

But the realism of the game is contrary to the needs of someome who wants to progress efficiently through the levels of the game.

I find myself in both categories from time to time, depending upon my mood.

The developers could have simply made the game a 2D airport map and left the visualization of the planes in our collective imaginations. But as fellow airplane enthusiasts, I believe they wanted to harness today’s graphics capabilities to bring us close to the airport. Personally, I think the the developers have done an outstanding job balancing efficiency and realism.

I’ve managed to unlock all 11 airports and I have a total 1200 planes in the combination of fleet and contract aircraft. And I completed all levels at INN and BRI and I am at level 53-54 on the other 9 airports. So I share your concerns about keeping the game exciting and staying motivated to complete all levels in all the airports.

The best way I have found to progress in the current UI of the game is by choosing the largest aircraft available that have RT times of an hour or less. I make those my favorites. And in whichever airport I decide to play that day, I will click the “heart” icon AND the “ready” icon (the exclamation point) and I process that subset of aircraft. As an example, in LHR, I have 36 aircraft that fit that description. I cycle through them in about 45 minutes to an hour and those aircraft produce nearly 8 XP per minute collectively meaning that I can progress through one level in about two hours.

When I want to simply watch planes land and take off, I put the game into one of the many camera modes and enjoy the show.

I’d like to give a heartfelt thank you to the developers for their thoughtfulness efforts to make a great game as well as a relatively high frequency of updates that they provide us. I think you’ll all agree when I say that we have become somewhat spoiled with the updates and have a hard time waiting for “what’s next”.

WOA is, hands down, my go-to game whenever I have some downtime.

[T3X45ranger]

Not the place to ask, friend. Use the search function and visit the basics topics.