Who knows, Hawk?
I, for one, was drawn to the CT for the chance to fight against an historical opponent, without the fight being interrupted by a plane that was, in RL, flown by a friendly country.
Example: I was in a great fight in the MA one evening, me in a Jug D-30, and I believe it was StSanta or Glasses in a 109G10(I believe it was the G10, will have to find that CD and review the film again if I can find it) at 25K. Neither of us could gain the upper hand for more than a second or two, lots of verticals and scissors going on. I think I finally got my opponent worn down, cause he went into a dive. I pulled my nose down to pursue, looked over and here comes a Spit...BLAM!
Wrongto, no fault of his own, meanders into the fight and gets a kill on me.
Not against the rules of the MA, but experiences like that made me want to find out just how the fight might have turned out without outside interference.
The lower numbers in the CT do lend themselves to more 1v1, 2v2, etc fights, which I enjoy more than the hamster wheel furrballs in the MA, and you get the added benefit of only fighting against an historical adversary. To me, that adds to the experience, the immersion if you will......
Increasing icon range won't drag all that many more players into the CT, IMHO. The available planesets will curtail overcrowding, as the majority of players want to fly what they want, when they want to fly it, and limiting them from doing that will keep numbers down below MA levels.
As to being on the road to another MA, we have been on that road for months already, we just have fewer regular players in the arena.
Just my perspective, my personal interpretation of things the way I see them, nothing more.
I stand by my earlier statement.......it would not hurt a thing to try one change at a time and see how it affected arena attendance. I cannot see the arena suddenly becoming flooded with MA types, for the simple reason that some players absolutely refuse to fly in any arena, event, scenario, etc...that does not allow them to fly their favorite plane, whatever it may be, all the time, whenever they want to fly it.
