"Seems the "pure fighter guys" won out over the "We like to do everything crowd"..."
seems to me, that other than upping with 50 other guys to run a missun... and lets face it, you only need 10-15 to capture a base, and your when your 50 man missun hits the other 50 man missun, your not going to see or engage more than 10-15 of them before you die or run anyway...and with 250 in the late arena, theres a max of just over 80 per side, im certain that if everyone in the late arena wanted to be in a big missun, as you seem to be claiming they most certainly do, you could easily orginize and run one...and theres a helluva lot more to everything than just missions and furballing.
"5 guys attack a 50 man mission and get squashed and you are complaining about getting shot down"
hitech makes one change, and those 5 guys and 10-20 of your mission guys go and do, or at least try and do something else - and your complaining about HITECH changing how people play?
you have more options for doing everything than ever before, and theres a lot more to the game than just furballing and base-capture, hell furballers rely on base capture to move the furball around a bit, wether they admit it or not, they get bored fighting the same people over the same terrain all the time.
give the other gameplay and slower planes a try, at least-
whats the matter, mission boy? afraid you might kill something?
oh, and i just checked the arena numbers, there was just under 600 on, with about 53% in the latewar arenas, and 47% in the early and mid arenas...i figure this nearly 50-50 split is what it will look like most nights, with one or the other being larger depending, that hitech could safely raise the 250 cap to 350.