lazs - Willy and I are old friends, gentle dig at his gripe, nothing in it. Interesting to see the back of this thread has a heap of guys posting here that I have great respect for. That is the only reason I am posting in it myself just by the way.
My comment that I'm not a furballer is an accurate self description. I'm not. I find furballs completely mind numbing. I can't maintain interest beyond about a minute. Finding myself in one, I usually either leave or fly straight level and slow so somebody can have the fun of shooting me. If the game was about exclusive furballing I wouldn't have bothered to stay a day. I am a special events afficianado. MA is mostly just a practice room for me, but I really enjoy the situational challenges of strat play. All that said, I know and completely understand that others have different and legitimate outlooks. Lately I am trying to walk a few yards in the other guy's shoes and furball a bit, but I find myself gritting my teeth and de-focussing with glazed over eyes just the same.
It is a way over-simplification to categorise players as strat and furballers. There are other types and lots of in-betweens. AH caters to all of them to some degree or they wouldn't be here.
The Hole in the Donut caters to whole group of guys n gals that crave high intensity, high speed, of the moment, entertainment. I do respect them but tend to sit back and watch them holding onto my bottom lip slowly stretching it down. I probably mis-categorise it as the difference between chess and checkers.
However there are others it caters to as well. It is a tremendous place to take the new guy and start to stress and demonstrate the needs of SA and positioning. All the guys that scream "I got no check 6" might profitably spend some time in there just learning survival rather than shooting with cannon and mouth.
Perhaps the people that constantly complain about the planes all the others are flying might find some value in the Hole. Here they might concentrate on looking for the weaknesses in the La7, Spit 16, C202 etc..
What I am saying is that even if you give them the tools doesn't mean they will pick them up, but if they do, there is no telling what they might create for themselves. Making a map that offers a variety of situations for a variety of player types is no easy feat. You can't make one that is perfect for everybody.
On fields being close together. There are a number of considerations. Firstly, yes you are right, HTC have a preferred distance between fields. I might presume that this was derived from long experience. Fester was the first to push that boundary and he made some folks happy by doing so. I can tell you though that there is a fair cadre that are frustrated by fields being so close. In the strat world it means you have to have numbers to influence a section of map where fields are close together. If grossly uneven numbers are required to effect any result then there is little happiness on any side.
By numbers I wish to qualify that I don't mean a local and temporal superiority gained through teamwork. I mean just having a large advantage in side numbers on the server for an hour or more. It's not a great deal of fun for any side when one country has a huge numbers advantage. It follows that if you need such to influence strat progress on a map it isn't a fun map.
The dynamics of the MA game change constantly as player numbers and quality change with the minutes. Trying to design a map for low numbers, high numbers and grossly unbalanced numbers is a challenge. Trying to cater for as many player preferences on top of that is quite a job of work.
Rgds.
