locked out again

[pluck]

the one thing i love about the bb, is the fact that people will talk out their butt. whether it is fact or not, they just assume, an for some odd reason believe that everyone will agreee with what they are saying.  and the funnest thing, is that if they really cared at all, like they say they do, they could just search the bbs and find the answear.  but of course there is always conspiracy.

[Benny Moore]

Originally posted by Helm
....maybe join a squad and see how difficult it is to fly with them,  cause you cant get in the door?....you might get frustrated yourself?

Frustrated?  Isn't that, you know, what a solo flier experiences when your squadron all gang up on him and take turns making firing passes?  Really, it's silly to try to attribute Hitech's choices to a dislike for squadrons.  But whatever the reason, I'm happy to see that the squadrons are being forced apart enough to, perhaps, make some of them actually work for a change.

[Ghastly]

So far Ah is stronger than ever.... so maybe that sim was not as good as you remember.

Considering it was built by many of the same people as AH and was essentially the "AH ver 1", I doubt it.

But whatever.  I'm just saying not to underestimate the impact squadron loyalty has on whether or not many players play a particular sim- and that changes that undermine the squadrons may have a greatly amplified (and unanticipated) impact.

And what's worse, is that when you begin to lose those squadrons what you lose first are those that provide the very thing HTC seems to be striving to preserve - a sense of community.

[clerick]

Originally posted by Ack-Ack
Yes, this was a vast conspiracy that was in the works for some time.  

See, one night the members of the super secret SAPP Society met at their super secret hide out next to the Wendy's on the corner of Adams and Front Street, you know the little neighborhood bar called the HideOut.  During our weekly meeting to discuss how we can take over and rule the world, our Sargeant at Arms, kappa, came up with a nice little idea that will help pave the way for our eventual conquest of the world.  

But we needed the help of some putz in Grapevine in order to put our diabolical plan in place.  So we took some rather compromising photos of this guy in Grapevine and his RV-8 (ok, I understand the sheep in the 1st photo but the Finnish midget only wearing a leather flying helmet is beyond me.) and mailed the photos to him with our demands.

What demands?  Why, the utter and complete destruction of squadrons in Aces High.  Why?  Because they are blocking our path to world domination.  Once we get rid of these meddling squadrons there will be nothing to block SAPP's devious and sinister plans to take over the world.

How would we go about destroying the squadrons in Aces High?  On this I give sole credit to Silat and GuppyJr as they are the true architects of these very devious and under handed nefarious plan.  They came up with this idea to split the main arena into 4 seperate ones and then put a floating population capacity on each arena.  

But this is the genius of our plan.  In reality there is no floating population capacity limit.  See, instead there is a SAPP member sitting down on a computer that actually controls the population cap and when this SAPP member sees that a player in a squadron is trying to enter into an arena where the poor sap's squadron is flying, the SAPP member just hits a key and instantly the arena is full and the poor guy can't get in.  Enough of this and  eventually squadron cohesion breaks and the squadron implodes and ceases to exist.

Today no squadrons in Aces High, tomorrow the WORLD!


ack-ack

Guppy, vat ist dis man doink here??!

[Guppy35]

Originally posted by Ghastly
Considering it was built by many of the same people as AH and was essentially the "AH ver 1", I doubt it.

But whatever.  I'm just saying not to underestimate the impact squadron loyalty has on whether or not many players play a particular sim- and that changes that undermine the squadrons may have a greatly amplified (and unanticipated) impact.

And what's worse, is that when you begin to lose those squadrons what you lose first are those that provide the very thing HTC seems to be striving to preserve - a sense of community.

Of what squadrons do you speak?

I trust we're not back on the multi-squadrons claiming to be one squadron bit again.

As far as I can tell squadrons come and go.  The friendships built within the game transcend squadron loyalty.

Again using the 38 pilots aka SAPP.  We share a common interest and enjoy learning more about the plane and pilots who really flew it as well as getting the chance to wing together now and then for fun.  That involves guys from numerous squadrons and all three countries.

Anytime I'm in the arena there are folks I enjoy seeing regardless of country, squadron etc.  More often then not they're shooting my 38G full of holes.

I'd suggest that overemphasizing the importance of squadrons does a huge disservice to the community and the friendships built there, by trying to limit them to just squadrons.

[clerick]

It's the gang mentality, the feeling of belonging to somthing greater then yourself.  Not that it makes it right.

A classic example was a noob i ran into in the TA, he was talking trash about how good he was because the squad he was in was ranked high even though his personal stats showed him to be a lower-middle player at best.  Put a green player in the LTAR and they will all think they can shoot like the LTAR's are known for shooting.  Ego and bravado get VERY annoying.

[Ghastly]

No, I'm not talking about the megasquads, or those that form on a whim and break up just as fast.  With respect to WB's, I'm talking about squads like JG2, The Swampfoxes, and the 5th FG among others - folks who were and are life long friends above and beyond whatever sim might have brought them together.

The best example I know of in AH is the GMB's - who've been flying together for 10 years, with some members who go back even further.  

What I'm really trying to point out is that a lot of these guys don't run at the mouth on the boards like some of us - and when you start seeing people who don't usually post posting that they are upset because they can't fly with the rest of their squadron, to me it's a warning sign - I saw the same thing happen elsewhere (people who didn't usually post start to complain about how the issues were disrupting their ability to fly with friends) and when the issues weren't resolved and in fact were worsened, you saw a general exodus of many of the squadrons that made up the backbone of the special events, and the core of the sim's community.

But that's my view, your's may be "hurrah, get rid of them, we don't need 'em any more."

And given the maturity level of some (many) of the players in AH, maybe that sense of community isn't needed any more (or even possible).  

But if so, that's a sad sad thing.

[Guppy35]

Originally posted by Ghastly
No, I'm not talking about the megasquads, or those that form on a whim and break up just as fast.  With respect to WB's, I'm talking about squads like JG2, The Swampfoxes, and the 5th FG among others - folks who were and are life long friends above and beyond whatever sim might have brought them together.

The best example I know of in AH is the GMB's - who've been flying together for 10 years, with some members who go back even further.  

What I'm really trying to point out is that a lot of these guys don't run at the mouth on the boards like some of us - and when you start seeing people who don't usually post posting that they are upset because they can't fly with the rest of their squadron, to me it's a warning sign - I saw the same thing happen elsewhere (people who didn't usually post start to complain about how the issues were disrupting their ability to fly with friends) and when the issues weren't resolved and in fact were worsened, you saw a general exodus of many of the squadrons that made up the backbone of the special events, and the core of the sim's community.

But that's my view, your's may be "hurrah, get rid of them, we don't need 'em any more."

And given the maturity level of some (many) of the players in AH, maybe that sense of community isn't needed any more (or even possible).  

But if so, that's a sad sad thing.

Squads come and go.  The friendships that are real stick around regardless.  My old AW squad, the Nomads still has a mailing list that folks check in on occasionally.  There are few of us still flying scattered among different squads in AH, but it doesn't mean folks don't keep up.

If staying in touch matters, the game is irrelevant.  If that's all you have in common, the friendships aren't that lasting anyways.

Trust me.  I'm not against squads.  I have my own, the 80th Headhunters.  Somehow we continue to find a way to fly together when we want to.  I have yet to have the arenas prevent that.

Using the SAPP guys again as an example.  We had 20+ 38 drivers up and about last Wednesday.  The meeting point was the low number country in LW blue.  We all made it.  If it had been full, we'd have gone to the next arena.  

Point being, if you want to fly together you can make it happen.

[Ghastly]

Point being, if you want to fly together you can make it happen

Thank you.  You just made exactly my point.  Because if you can't do it reasonably in your favorite sim, you'll do it somewhere else.

Anyway, you've made my point for me, I'll STFU now.

[jtdragon]

I've tryied the early/mid war and do not not like them, Too few people in them. If I want to dual I'll go the the dualing arena.
Every fix that has been done has just made things worst. Can not stand tank town now, Most GV play is gone. Long drives from spawn points. I'll never be a good pilot so don't get mad if I HO you to get a kill, thats war and I will play like it's a real war ( I know what thats like ).

My game time is a tenth of what it use to be.

[vorticon]

Originally posted by Xasthur
EW was fantastic for about a week.

Really, it was awesome... the numbers were high and there were LOTS of great TnB stall-fights.

Then everyone got over it and back to LW....now the fights just aren't there.

(This is the case for late-night Australian time.... Usa Prime-time may be different... though from what I gather... it's not)

thats self defeatism...no-one goes into it because numbers are low, so they stay low...if a few squads made a point of doing the occasional squad night in there, numbers might get high enough to spark interest from non-attached players.

[Blooz]

No one goes there anymore because they enabled all the early war planes in the Late war arena.

In the original setup EW was EW planes only, MW was MW planes only and LW was LW planes only.

Ever since they enabled the early war planes in the Mid and Late war arenas everyone piled into the LW arena so they can still come here to whine about La7's not slowing down so their Spit 1's can get a shot at them.

[Toad]

I agree, Blooz. I think that was a mistake.

[DamnedRen]

There appears to be a real problem that has once again popped up.

Splitting up the arenas has been done. However, the existing servers don't appear to able to handle the smaller crowds. We already saw this when the game upgraded from AH to AH2. What I'm talking about is the FOG. It's back! With a vengence. The real question is what's up with the servers? On a clear day you can see forever...doesn't appear to be the case in AH2 anymore....If I remember rightly clouds may hurt some folks FR. Fog helped it but was a little overkill and not very realistic. For those of you with slower machines the clouds are really Beautiful! However, the fog seems to have been reset to just above where we used to see the tiles on the deck...not quite. But real close.

Speaking of the subject...I tried to log into Orange is showed 370/320. A couple of minutes later it showed
369/420 or /430. Go figure ...I sure can't. I might be nice to let us understand just what makes the numbers change minute by minute....

Thanks

Ren
The Damned

[Guppy35]

Originally posted by Ghastly
Thank you.  You just made exactly my point.  Because if you can't do it reasonably in your favorite sim, you'll do it somewhere else.

Anyway, you've made my point for me, I'll STFU now.

Interesting how you got that from what I said.

My point was if you want to fly with your squad in AH, you can.

As long as you place limits on what you are willing to do within the framework of the game, you probably will find a way to make it the games fault you can't fly together.

It's easy to make it happen if it is important to you.