Suggestion Sort players by ACTUAL last_ping_time in the world map

Hello dear Skyrama players and Skyrama Team,
I was again thinking of some very simple feature or change to improve Skyrama without touching ActionScripts in Flash and I remembered one thing that always pissed me off while playing Skyrama.

When you open the world map you get a randomly selected range of players sorted by last_ping_time but most of those accounts are still inactive for like 1 year as the range select players from like last active 500-529.

I feel like it would be way better if this PHP server code would be rewritten to not choose random range but literally the last active 29 players. The list is already sorted by last_ping_time so just removing the few lines that randomly choose the range would make the game way more fun as you would actually send planes to active players in the respected countries.

I'm attaching a picture with how it works currently:

A simple short rewrite of the "account.getLatest" action would make this way better and without any need to touch the ancient Flash client code.

I'm legit willing to help the actual devs at Bigpoint to rewrite this short part of the code if someone at Bigpoint would be willing to collaborate with me, and this feature would be welcome.

Please leave a LIKE and comment if you feel like this would be better and you would rather send random planes to actual active players not random selection of inactive players.

Thanks for reading and have a great day! ^^

 

Hi!

It's rare to read such a useful and meaningful post on this now almost completely extinct forum. I wish this would reach those who are at least as knowledgeable and could change this (and many other things). Thank you for drawing attention to this!

Is there any tactic to filter out the more active players in the list? They have completely "rearranged" these several times in the past, but it hasn't changed for months, so for example I have a list that is completely empty (from a given country).

By the way, for many of us, this is not possible (i.e., opening the "Explore" menu) because since the end of 2020 we no longer play the game from browser, but from a launcher.

 

Hey Der,
i'm not sure if I completely understand your issue but you say that some countries even show no players for you?

There really isn't any way to affect which players you see in the world map and in your friend list you cannot do anything like that either by any official means.

Thanks for the kind comment and hopefully this post could at least reach the team who does the new events and stuff.

 

Yes, I mean that the system doesn't show new people from the country where I add many people, even though I think they would be there, I'm talking about big countries.

Out of curiosity, I've sent out thousands of planes to different countries on xp multiplier days (i think more people are playing then). Needless to say, the completed planes are well below 1%.

 

Hi bulva2! I completely agree with your idea, as it is already bothering many players. I had a task that required me to send back 30 planes from Mexico, and I was given a list of players, but they were all inactive, so I had to create an account with the country of Mexico. If there were more active players in the list, it would have been easier. I would also like to bring up the issue of changing the sounds in the game (airplanes, helicopters, and seaplanes). When I send a plane with jet engines, it makes the sound of a propeller-driven airplane. There are many different bugs in this game... If the Skyrama team wants to attract more players, they should consider making updates or introducing new features. I have been playing this game since 2020, and it has remained the same. Please consider the feedback from players.

 

Hey Shnik,
maybe you could list out some planes with this sound issue but perhaps create a new topic for that one. Engine sounds are picked for a plane through the assets.xml file, where they are specified in the AircraftComponent tag, so it should be a pretty quick fix however, it depends on whether someone can push a quick server update like that to their git repo or whatever they use just for a small change like that.

Thanks for the nice comment and have a great day!

 

Hi bulva2! To be honest, I don't remember which planes they were, but even my father said there was a bug (he also plays Skyrama). If you want, we can add each other as friends. My in-game name is:Shnik, ID:13290026

 

I've just realized that I've accidentally put the thread in 'Player Corner' instead of 'Update & Idea Pool'. Could this please get moved? Also, is there any chance that this post could please reach the team behind the event updates, as I suppose they are the ones maintaining the server-side of the game as well?

Thanks a lot @Flight-Attendant , hope you're having a good day / enjoy your weekend. ^^

 

Hello bulva2,

I've moved your thread as requested. It has also been forwarded to the relevant department.

Have a nice weekend.


Kind regards,
Flight-Attendant

 

This is an absolutely neccessary improvement, in my opinion. Getting new buddies from sending planes to "random" people is like winning a lottery. It's not impossible, but the probability is slim to none. Furthemore, I send cargo planes to get specific cargo and out of habit I send it always to the same countries. I keep seeing the same people litreally for months, maybe even years at this point, yet the planes pretty much never returtn serviced.

This would actually benefit both BP and the players. It would make more traffic for the actually active players, and, you know, the more planes you get, the bigger probability of players buying quickservice, wink wink BP.

Seriously though, I feel like new players are in a huge disadvantages because of this, we long time players have made connections over the years, some of us play for more than a decade. But how is a new player supposed to enjoy the game when (s)he sends the very few of his/her starting planes to someone unknown and it never returns serviced with a new buddy to exchange planes with?

Please, make this happen BP.

 

When I started, at the beginning of the game there were no events, we bought planes from the store, at the beginning quick service cost 50. Now you have luxury.

So don't cry kids

I've been playing since the beginning and I think it's easier for new players now.

 

Hello everyone,

Some posts that were not objective and rather offensive have been deleted. Any further posts of this kind will be deleted without notice.

These ideas are meant to improve the game; some people value one aspect more than others.


Kind regards,
Flight-Attendant

 

Hi BLONDI,
I think you may have misunderstood the point I was making. This isn’t about whether the game was harder or easier years ago, nor about nostalgia for the early days. The issue being discussed here is a technical one, as the current system frequently shows inactive players, which directly affects plane returns, buddy connections, and overall interaction, especially for newer players who don’t yet have established networks. Pointing out that some things maybe used to be harder doesn’t really address that problem. Improving outdated mechanics doesn’t take anything away from long-time players or diminish their efforts, it just makes the game healthier and more playable for actually everyone.
So this isn’t "crying" by any means, it’s constructive feedback aimed at improving an objectively flawed and outdated system.