Flight Rising Discussion

Great breakdown as always, brit! It was a delight to read through. I loved the addition of the fest raffle numbers. Shiny new data!

Seeing that the active flight percentages are fairly consistent with last years numbers is cool. I noticed that Ice, Nature, and Water had the most dramatic decreases in activity numbers compared to last year, and while we can't draw conclusions without multiple/more data points on the change in activity, my brain was like "battle exhaustion"? maybe? Especially because I know Water pushes in December. That made me think it'd be cool to know whether the active user numbers for flights are boosted during their pushes and/or battles compared to these numbers, and by how much. Lots of fun possibilities!

If you ever want help collecting data I figured I'd extend the offer, because I'm totally down. It's super fun that you do this work every year, and your writeups are always very educational. Thank you! <3

Bump because the stats were enjoyable to read and I appreciate all the work done to compile these :3

This was a very interesting read!

* 0 * stats <3
thank you i enjoyed reading this


edit: earth's first place stats chart over the other flights , i saw it as a bowl of dropped rainbow noodles ahahah

Thank you for all your hard work Brit! This is incredible, truly. It's so interesting to read through.

[quote]Does the smaller flight always win? It depends! In the post-den game we have 3 battles where the larger flight wins, 6 battles where the smaller flight wins, and 2 where I would say the flights were essentially equal in size. While the larger flight seems to be at a disadvantage, it is completely possible to win if they're able to leverage their size to come up with more resources.[/quote] I think this is a fair enough statement, though I'd like to stress that the larger the ratio between the battling flights are, the higher the mountain is that needs to be climbed by the larger flight once OOF participation is taken into account. A theoretically scalable wall quickly becomes insurmountable depending on the difference. I mainly want to say this to encourage flights to be very careful when considering opponents, due to the extremely high cost of post-hibden battles. (I just don't want to see flights suffer massive disappointment when they don't realize just how much they need to put forward for a victory.) Two recent battles where the larger flight won while there was a ratio greater than than 1.1 between the battling flights were [b]Earth vs. Water[/b] (1.13) and [b]Fire vs. Light[/b] (2.14), and I think it's important to mention that the OOF raffle support for both were [i]incredibly[/i] skewed due to extenuating circumstances. In EvW, Water's OOF Raffle took in 62% of the OOF Raffle levels (out of a total of 801k!!!!) and in FvL, Light took in 72% of the OOF Raffle levels out of a total of 527k - and both battles had flips for the latter part of the day on the final day, super close, meaning that's just how much the OOF support needed to be skewed to win! The circumstance for EvW was the strong desire to see Water possibly defeat Earth, as they were at the time the only flight that was both powerful enough and small enough to have a chance. For FvL, Light offered a Bone Fiend that was not matched by Fire, and although Light's internals were very high as well, Light still nearly lost because of the sheer size difference of the third largest flight vs. the smallest flight. Light simply needed that much of an OOF support imbalance to match the required exalt output for the size ratio. I'd also like to make the point that the traditional OOF sources (Raffle, PB, Flight Mercs, Art for Fodder) are not the only sources of levels that can come from OOF! Even if all organized flight OOF sources are blocked out, [b]the Realm-Wide Auction House exists[/b]. Private buyers would have to achieve the same amount of skew in order to deal with the ratio. Please keep this in mind when planning battles when your flights are very different in size. Tl;dr: [b]Although I agree with the quoted text[/b], I would like to caution battle planners to [b]take into account the degree of OOF skew required for their flights to win given their size[/b]. Please make sure you know what you're signing up for! It's never fun to lose a billion+ treasure for no flips.

[quote name="brit" date="2023-12-26 18:56:01" ] Ice was having a slow year compared to previous - which could be why we see them ready to battle 2 years in a row now! [/quote] Oh also! I can confirm that Ice's placements were indeed low this year because of the last-minute battle planning overriding any other plans for the year we might have had. The jump to battle mode with only 6 weeks of prep derailed our final 6 months of the year (and was totally fun and worth it) (and we very much look forward to battling yet again next year!! :3) EDIT: [quote name="Sylvandyr" date="2023-12-31 11:00:51" ]I would like to caution battle planners to [b]take into account the degree of OOF skew required for their flights to win given their size[/b]. Please make sure you know what you're signing up for! It's never fun to lose a billion+ treasure for no flips. [/quote] Would it really be FR dom if water flight didn't get to shove us into a locker every 2-3 years like clockwork? I'm not sure it would. Fourth time's a charm, right??????

[quote name="squidragon" date="2023-12-31 11:06:52" ] [quote name="Sylvandyr" date="2023-12-31 11:00:51" ]I would like to caution battle planners to [b]take into account the degree of OOF skew required for their flights to win given their size[/b]. Please make sure you know what you're signing up for! It's never fun to lose a billion+ treasure for no flips. [/quote] Would it really be FR dom if water flight didn't get to shove us into a locker every 2-3 years like clockwork? I'm not sure it would. Fourth time's a charm, right?????? [/quote] Chuckling and crying for you at the same time. ;-; At least Water dom's awesome to work with. <3

[quote name="Sylvandyr" date="2023-12-31 11:00:51" ] Two recent battles where the larger flight won while there was a ratio greater than than 1.1 between the battling flights were [b]Earth vs. Water[/b] (1.13) and [b]Fire vs. Light[/b] (2.14), and I think it's important to mention that the OOF raffle support for both were [i]incredibly[/i] skewed due to extenuating circumstances. In EvW, Water's OOF Raffle took in 62% of the OOF Raffle levels (out of a total of 801k!!!!) and in FvL, Light took in 72% of the OOF Raffle levels out of a total of 527k - and both battles had flips for the latter part of the day on the final day, super close, meaning that's just how much the OOF support needed to be skewed to win! The circumstance for EvW was the strong desire to see Water possibly defeat Earth, as they were at the time the only flight that was both powerful enough and small enough to have a chance. For FvL, Light offered a Bone Fiend that was not matched by Fire, and although Light's internals were very high as well, Light still nearly lost because of the sheer size difference of the third largest flight vs. the smallest flight. Light simply needed that much of an OOF support imbalance to match the required exalt output for the size ratio. [/quote] @Sylvandyr WvE is weird because (at the time, Earth has grown since) a 1.3ish ratio isn't even bad but Earth is an outlier in terms of the internals that they can output for their size LOL. LvF is an extreme case of one of the largest flights against the smallest and I would similarly agree that a battle like Shadow vs Earth or Arcane vs Fire be undertaken cautiously and with certain expectations. However, the third battle we had was Wind vs Lightning where Wind overcame a 1.28 ratio (using last year's estimates as they were closer to the battle date) with only 52% of the raffle support - so it's definitely not a condition that needs to be met to pull something like this off. It really depends on which two flights it is and what their strengths are, but I'd say roughly a 1.0-1.3 ratio is our sweet spot. Very excited for Wind vs Ice!

@squidragon It's like the control group, every once in a while we need a WvI to make sure that dom is still working properly! I like to think the fourth one will be like the first one where there were flips every half hour and everything was good chaos.