We as a community are looking really sad right now...

[storch]

not at all bothered by that or taken anywhere near seriously

[Killjoy2]

One suggestion to help the community.

Make it possible to land and pickup downed pilots.   While we're at it one GV could pick up a disabled driver.   Just watch what happens.

I've mentioned before that the game doesn't reward the person who brings supplies and provides support.

[Slash27]

Originally posted by thndregg
I try to get along with all sorts that prefer all sorts of game style, so long as we  respect each other's character  and differences. That in itself has proven difficult for some. I feel that there are those that, if it were  possible, would do everything they could to have HTC cancel the subscriptions of those who's difference in game-style conflicts with thier own-- hence the "I wish you would quit/go away/go play another game" statements I've seen pop up.

Getting old isnt it?

[hubsonfire]

It got old a year ago, Slash.

[Stoney74]

Originally posted by Overlag
i dunno, id just perfer to see the heavy bombers, used in the role that should be used in.... i almost cry every time i see a lancaster drop 14x1000lbs over a GV spawn then auger into the ground

I totally agree with this, and I think this type of gaming the game is exactly what (sorry for speaking for you) Corky is talking about.  Personally, I'd love to see formations of 12 or more sets of bombers with tons of escorts, as long as we had notice they were on the way--fight's on!  It'd almost be like an instantaneous FSO mission.  

The only problem is it takes patience on the part of the players--a commodity that IMO is lacking among a large portion of the community.  That's why my own personal hope is that CT can provide that type of play.  The people that like that kind of play will have the opportunity, hopefully, to indulge in some more immersive play.  I'll come back to the MA when I want to mix it up at 2,000 feet off the deck...

[DamnedRen]

Originally posted by Guppy35
Agreed.  most of us started in RR.  I know i went kicking and screaming to FR.

Any number of us AH 'vets' were RR vets long before we went to FR including a certain BK CO who was hanging out with the Nomads in RR as +Uber, +Dead etc

It was about fun at that point too.

The RR/FR debate from a bygone era has nothing to do with what we're talking about now.

And I'd hate to derail any thread trying to come up with ways to improve the community by ressurecting old AW stuff.

I don't think it might be considered derailment.  I began virtual life in FR. It is interesting to note RR arenas were over-populated nightly. I gather that says something for the type of people who flew back then. Although it might also say something for the type of people that might show up in the furture.

IMHO if HT was after the big bucks he'd already have RR arena's. As he could have filled them nightly. He hasn't and surprise-surprise, lots of folks have actually taken the time to learn to fly. And yes, RR was the easy way out and lots of bomber pilots might be flying fighters if it was here today.

THE only thing I that I've ever had a question about is the statement concerning:

"We made this change because it will allow us to support an unlimited amount of players in a much healthier online environment that gives us better long-term growth. The single MA has grown to the point of being unhealthy. This is not a subjective evaluation, it is quantifiable and they are numbers that we look at every day. It's obvious that we simply cannot keep pumping more players into a single arena without hitting a stagnation point. "

I haven't been able to figure what's unhealthy about 500 players up having fun together. Sure, there are some folks that will be complaining on 200. I don't happen to spend much time listening to that channel as I always had enough fun talking within my own Country and with my Squadmates. There always seemed to be fights available just about anywhere. Don't get me wrong. I talked with other Countries members from time to time to say Hi to friends or respond to a good fight. So the statement above confuses me. How many makes it unhealthy?350? 500? 650? How is it quantified? I suppose if the only reason someone got up was to complain about something not going their way it's always been easy enough to mute them. The same goes chl 200 or even these boards. When someone realizes their petty whines have little value they normally fall in line with the rest of the community or leave the game.

What is more odd is another arena has been added. That adds more dimension to the game for some. They can go play in an EW or MW arena. Ok, we had the CT which could be considered one of those. But, we got another one.  What makes it so odd is both of the new arenas get almost the same participation as the old CT got. The majority of the folks STILL lean toward the LW. To the point that a second spill over arena was neccessary. What does that mean?

If I had any worries at all it would be that "a community life style" appears to have changed over the years. The Community as a whole used to address concccerns through peer pressure. I don't see that happening anymore. Pity. It really is a great game. Leave bias at the door, get up and enjoy the game for what it is.

Ren
The Damned and a Player of AH2

[hubsonfire]

Originally posted by DamnedRen
If I had any worries at all it would be that "a community life style" appears to have changed over the years. The Community as a whole used to address concccerns through peer pressure. I don't see that happening anymore. Pity. It really is a great game. Leave bias at the door, get up and enjoy the game for what it is.

Ren
The Damned and a Player of AH2

I think we (the community as a whole) simply got too large to do that, and I shudder to think what it's like for the guys who are completely new. AW was my first venture into the online world, and at times, I was absolutely baffled. Even today, the kind of behavior I see on 200 at times (me a seasoned AH veteran of 5 years) still pisses me off, but it seems ingrained in the minds of many. Those guys have no idea who we are, and they don't care. That's how they've acted, likely because they saw someone else act that way, and that's all there is to it. Hopefully that kind of behavior will die off, but only time will tell.

Regarding the rest: as a former RR dweeb, I can describe my actions and feelings in the FR arena pretty succinctly- ****ing clueless. I loved the game, but I had 0 idea what to do, or how to do it. Seems to me that there are lots of guys starting out these days who are pretty much in the same position. While an RR arena to help them get on their feet and get going seems like a good idea, I would think that there would be the same division between the 2 subsets of the community that existed in AW. That kind of thing, while amusing to those who remember it, probably would only agitate AH players who hadn't already survived the standard AW taunting.

Anyway, that's how I'm seeing things.

[DamnedRen]

Don't get me wrong. I don't neccesarily advocate an RR arena as I am old school FR. To most FR guys RR was an arcade game. But, there was a difference. There was no animosity of RR players by FR players. However, it did seem to have it's niche and brought alot of players to the game who would have moved on to easier games.

Anyone from the old days should remember taunting was more of a good natured affair. Yes, there was always one or two who went overboard but normally peeer pressure stopped it.  We'd up a couple of buffs with fighter escort and go pork the spit factory or some back field. It'd be a fight in and out. Normally everyone made it. The reason was tactics. Recently I flew one of the scenarios. Bombers escorted to hit some target. They never made it. Reason? Tactics.  It's no different than the old days. If you flew with 4 guys on a sweep and someone got in on an enemy then 2 stayed up to cover and 2, max, went down and took care of business. The same with the bomber escort mission. The flight was jumped by coalt and maybe a few higher fighters. Within a few minutes 75% of all escorts were on the deck. Instead of pushing the enemy down they followed them and the bombers got hit by a smaller group and died.

That's why I say the issue lays with our community. Let's face facts. There are tons of bomber pilots flying  around because they just love to take a ahour to get to a reasonable altitude, try and bomb (and yes HT made it sooooo easy to bomb...) then get shot down most of the time. Think about the history of fighters. I wanna be a fighter pilot!! It's cool! You can't cut it. So it becomes, I want to be a bomber pilot cause Im still a pilot and I'm doing something for my country. Hmmm, still don't have the coordination to do that...so it becomes...I wanna be a navigator or gunner on a bomber. Why? Because its alot better than being a mud marine, etc. Now take this game or any other flight game. Did you join up with AH because, "Hey! What a great game! I wanna be a bomber pilot!!!" How many people do you know that walked in the door and jumped in a plane started in a B-17? Did you?

Hubs right about folks being clueless. First you gotta learn to fly. While doing that you gotta learn the rules of conduct within the game. If all you hear is garbge on 200 then you think I guess this is how we're supposed to act. Meanwhile, you barely get off the ground and die from someone you never saw before.  "What?, you say", "You really can see behind you? Wow!" So now you get up a few times and die alot. This fighter thing might be a bit too much but durn he game is awesome so I guess I'll try out bombers. Yeah, bombers I can get a little high shoot people down AND i can actually hit a target I bomb every once in a while. they don;t ask why they ccan shoot someone down. If they did they might find out those guys they shoot down are the same guys who they were a month ago. They were getting killed all the time by other fighters so those folks would go after the bombers. With no tactical training they just run up the bombers 6 and became easy targets for the bomber driver.  When they run outa idea guess what....they too become bomber drivers. Wait!! Lets try out GV's....yeah, thats right....cool!!!!

My thoughts are our community isn't doing much to help new guys get up to speed. Trainers try and get them so they don't die every flight. At least they have a fighting chance to become decent pilots. But, the older squads get too picky about who they bring in and you end up with squads made up of guys who never learned anything picking up new guys who know even less. The final result is you get big squads of clueless guys running around trying to have fun. Then it becomes, "you bastige! you interupted my fight"! "How dare you". Or, how bout this one..."you cheated! There's no way you can fly like that". If yer clueless, then there must be some explaination so cheating sounds about right.

IMHO until the community starts thinking of this as a game again instead of being a " I was gang banged and you're no good so let's settle this in the DA" or some other such BS and just get back up and have fun it won't matter how many people you have up in an anera. People forgot to have fun. Nasty to everyone around aint fun its stupid. Try helping the new guys. Alot don't know much about nor start in the Ta and are pretty much lost from the moment they get up. Give them a chance to become a pilot like you were and enjoy the fact they got up and tried their best to give you a fight.

The Community makes the game what it is. The community has to fix it when it burps. Splitting up arenas is a bandaid not a fix. Until we change our mindset nothing will change.

Ren
The Damned and an AH Player

[FiLtH]

I remember when FR in AW had like 30 people in it nightly. We were an RR squad back then, and a few of us decided to give FR a try. We messed around in there a bit until we finally started getting better. Then the rest of the squad came over.

     After a while, many other squads made the move to FR. We usually had a couple hundred people in there.


     I don't remember there being any disputes between FR and RR. Except for an occasional comment about RR being a training area for future FR pilots.  It was like two different games. I can't remember anyone from RR. I just didnt know any of them.

[Hades55]

Originally posted by Patches1
Before any capture attempt can succeed, the City Strat for that Zone must first be reduced to 50%.

 

(You are on the right way of thinking But the idea still need work.....)

So what? what can force me to land grabing if i am a furballer? who cares for 1 more field (take it or lost it ? ).

What can force bombers go real High (as in reality) and fighters go High to
intercept them as in reality, as was designed)  if they have nothing to loose ?

ONLY ONE ( 1 ) thing can force you go High (as in rearlity) and kill bombers..

When you have to protect your lovely Spit Factory (or lala).

Dont you protect it ?  No Spit.

Hordes of Spit Dweebs will take off to protect their ride with any kind of cannon fighters (as in reality ) and hordes of ponys jugs lightings will intercept them where they was designed for, HIGH. (as in reality).

JUst put spit factories deep inside nmy territory (inside cities) ...
and let the real War begin.....just imagine

[nopoop]

Good post Ren. Lot a truth in it.

[SuperDud]

Originally posted by nopoop
Good post Ren. Lot a truth in it.

Agreed, excellent post Ren!

[Overlag]

Originally posted by Stoney74
I totally agree with this, and I think this type of gaming the game is exactly what (sorry for speaking for you) Corky is talking about.  Personally, I'd love to see formations of 12 or more sets of bombers with tons of escorts, as long as we had notice they were on the way--fight's on!  It'd almost be like an instantaneous FSO mission.  

The only problem is it takes patience on the part of the players--a commodity that IMO is lacking among a large portion of the community.  That's why my own personal hope is that CT can provide that type of play.  The people that like that kind of play will have the opportunity, hopefully, to indulge in some more immersive play.  I'll come back to the MA when I want to mix it up at 2,000 feet off the deck...

i think the main problem is the way HT deals with the furballers.

the HQ was, at one point a valid target, that had levels of damage that could be only slight... ie 1/4s. That was good, if the mission didnt do full damage maybe just darbar would be down etc.

However as the bomber missions got larger and better planned, the "fighters" of the game, instead of following suit, and creating larger defencive wings, and "fighting" (that thing they want so much) just whined on the BBS instead. HQ went to a 100% or nothing target, and support of hitting probably dropped 90% in one day. From that point on, support for large bombing raids on other strat targets started to fall also.

We STILL get the constant attacks (not in game, on the bbs) about bombers being so strong, etc etc etc... and its got to the point i RARELY get intercepted in this game, when back in 2003 you would probably not return from many single person (3 plane) runs... let alone a 3 to 4 person raid with escorts.... even those used to be risky. Now, one bomber can fly basically anywhere on the map and not feel troubled in anyway. But then if we hit our targets its "ch200: OMG the dam toolsheders spoild my game", while they all fly around on the deck unable to defend anything.


my point? well BOTH ends of the community are not like they used to be.

Bomber people dont feel the need for team work and large bomber escort missions (espcailly since there isnt the numbers to do it anymore).

and the Fighter people whine about it instead of fighting it, even if its now a much easier task to down bomber missions, as they are no longer "missions" in the sence that they are often single formations, flying without escort.

[SuperDud]

Overlag your definition of a Furballer might be different than mine or your arch nemisis Lazs. What you still fail to understand is that a true furballer doesn't care about bombers. Heck I don't even bother with them, they can go right by. We don't care about HQ. We don't care about missions or winning the war.

All we want to do is fight other enemy fighters. We start "whining" as you put it when we are fighting between 2 bases and along comes the war heros to stop the fight. Fighter town is a good example of this. You'd have many there just furballing it out and for some reason griefers come along and try to shut it down. It just get's annoying.

So like I said, most of the guys you've been arguing with don't care about intercepting your bombers, or taking an airfeild. On the other hand, we don't care that you guys do it. We just want our own little spot (IE Fighter Town) to be left alone and free from the war.

[Masherbrum]

Originally posted by Guppy35
Seems to me the whining and complaining far outweighs any constructive ideas on how to 'fix' things.

Way too many good people around here for there not to be good ideas too.

I'm not posting in the whine threads.  

As for the second part of the quote, my ideas will never matter.