Your assuming that ANYONE involved in missions or with a k/d (more deaths than kills) cant fight or have skill? Your wrong. There are many facets to playing this game and some of these guys are rather good.
Remember this, this score system means nothing if score means nothing to the player. You take it as FACT no matter what you see.
Some of you will never know, since these players dont choose to fight YOUR fight and fly to 20k and fight someone that will choose to run to buds, or dive to ack, or avoid a death at all cost when an advantage is placed on them even during a 1 on 1, thats not a fight. We all seen these players, they will avoid with the fight with a passion if a threat of them getting shot down arises. Period. You know who some of these guys are as well as the rest of us. You cant deny that people want to fight, but the instant someone has an advantage especially if its over a higher ranking guy, their ghost.
So who is avoiding a fight? Its been shown over and over again that usually when your dealing with someone that cares about their score, they wont fight unless its an absolute advantage, by ALT, by E, by numbers (horde),, Yes there are fighter hordes too,,, so in a furball, who usually is at the highest altitude? higher ranking players.... Am I wrong? They climb out for a sector and a half come back in and look for the easy picks where others are engaged in 1v1. Am I wrong?
So when you say that someone is avoiding a fight, you cant be more wrong, they just dont want to be bullied or pad someones score because they have to fight a fight only when they have a disadvantage.
IMO, As for NOE's, they are effective. Usually the ones that dont care about score are in them, why? k/d dont mean anything to them. Most can still fly and handle their own in a 1 on 1, but most of you wouldnt know that, some of you are never alone yourself to find out because your at the safe harbor of your friendly dar in a furball. More often than not most of us are out and alone fighting not in base take mode but looking for a good fight. Its very hard to find 2v2's 3v3's or even 5v3's with or without advantage. But I dont take any pride in RTB'ing with someone on my six, I am usually in it till one of us is shot down. THATS the true SCORE, who will fight to the death.
Venture out and look for a fight, I find them all the time. ALONE. Fly something that cant go 25k, Shooting down TBM's all day with a TEMP has got to get old, but its not about that, its about having the advantage at all cost and your precious k/d.
Yes the scoring is.... well different, but used as a general ruler its easy to see what type of player and what kind of skill they have. I used k/d because its an easy one to maintain, you kill one guy before you die, not to tough. But to make you happy look at the hit % under the "attack" mode of those players. It shows most of them can't hit what they are aiming at with bombs. Again, no need to learn how to do it dead on each time, 6 other guys are assigned the same target so someone else is bound to get lucky. Dive bombing isn't that tough to learn, an hour or so in your favorite plane and you'll be hitting 90% of the time when you drop.
The horde is their crutch. They don't have to learn to fight in a fighter because odds are good someone will get the lone attacked before they can get to them inside the group. They don't have to learn to dive bomb because dropping 12 1k bombs in and around a hanger is just as good as one guy hitting with both of his.
Skilled players don't fly at 20k. Most fighting happens from 10k and down, so that is where you'll find them. Those players that circle over a furball are those no confidence, or point mongers. But even then, these guys are fighting, even if it is on their terms. Those that hide in the horde know they can't handle a fight so they hide. In the old days this use to bring about a certain drive in a person... the will to want to get better. Today they don't seem to have the will to get better, because...what the heck, they are capturing base after base now... What could be better?
NOEs are effective YES I have said it a million times. The reason they are effective is because you have 3 minutes from the time dar starts flashing to drop what your doing and run over there before the capture is done. The point is it shouldn't be ALL ABOUT THE CAPTURE. The game is combat, not capture. At the end of the day it doesn't matter how many bases you "own" because when you log in the next day it will all be different again. The one thing that should always be there is combat. Yes you can find small pockets with even fights, but those are become to few and far between. Hordes are becoming the norm because today's player want instant satisfaction, and with the big learning curve of this game the only way to quick satisfaction is the horde because skill is NOT a pre-requisite.
If a group of 6 to 10 "skilled" players put together a squad and made it their mission to bust up "hordes" and lame play didn't bother them, what do you think would happen? Spies would tell then where they were upping, and where they were going. The "Super Shark" squad would roll in and decimate any horde due to the lack of skills in the horde, and they would return to base landing hundreds of kills a night. You know it would be a blast for the killers, clubbing baby seals all night and laughing about it. I'm thinking it wouldn't be that much fun for the "horde" flyer tho. I'm thinking they would get pretty tired of getting killed all the time. Tired of not capturing that base again and again. Pretty frustrated with their "leaders" for not solving this problem for them.... cause you know they can't do it by them selves.
You know why you don't see that type of game play? Because most of the "skilled players" wouldn't use "spy information" because they couldn't care less about what "the other side is doing". In most cases they would spend the next 15 minutes trash talking the "spy" on the radio for being lame. They also wouldn't team up like that because they look for people who fight, not baby seals. There is no challenge killing baby seals, so no fun.
The horde is going to kill this game. It caused the arena spit and I'm sure there will be more things to come from it. You want to fly and grab land with 50 of your closest friends go for it, but sent 8 to one base 4 each in two groups as sweeps, 12 on another base, 5 on a porking run, 5 as high cap at the main target, and have the other 12 stand by 15 minutes to be the second wave at each of the bases your attacking. You still have your missions, your still working as a group, your still fighting for your country, your still actively trying to grab bases, but you ARE NOT A HORDE.
