Hi folks,
I'm new to AH (giving it the free trial) but not to online flight sims, and the numbers issue is a universal problem. It's the main reason (although there are many others) why I'm looking around for something better after playing AW since 1993-4.
It's human nature. When given the chance, many people will go to where they can get the easiest gratification. It's easy to get kills when flying in a crowd while it's harder to get shot down.
While I've found my kill tally can increase dramatically when I'm with the numbers, I find it almost embarrassing to get the kills (a holdover from my earlier AW days, which have passed, where how you played the game seemed to be more important than winning at any cost). Of course, the fifth time in a row when I get shot down and can't tell which of the six people ganging got the kill gets old pretty quickly too.
My first day up over the weekend (Sunday afternoon) was great, up to a point. After a period of crashing as I got used to the FM (and finding out the dive flaps on the P-38 don't do anything), I finally started getting a few kills in a Yak. Numbers were even at about 40 ea. country for most of the afternoon. I flew as a knit (having already seen the numbers posts on the boards and deciding to try and get off on the right foot).
Then, in bout 8:00 (U.S./central time)everything changed. There were solid red bars just about everywhere the action was, and each engagement seemed to be two friendlies at a time versus 6-8 enemies. Same old same old. It was time to log even though I would have liked to play a bit longer.
On the plus side, it is harder to take a base in AH (which is a very good thing), and easier to stay alive against a mob. I also don't expect to see looping and dogfighting B-17s ;-) And the community (as I've seen it) is friendly and helpful with more than a few "check six". They talk about "community" in AW, but this seems closer to the community I remember from the earlier days. Damm, I even see a lot of familiar handles here that I haven't seen for ages.
Still, since I got tired of paying $10/month for a game I could only enjoy playing some of the time, It's hard to see paying $30/month for the same. There are a lot of good suggestions on the board on how to address the issue. Of course, the end result should promote more even numbers yet still prevent stagnation where it becomes too hard to accomplish anything. I hope HTC can find a formula that works.
Charon
4261
[ 06-25-2001: Message edited by: Charon ]
[ 06-25-2001: Message edited by: Charon ]
[ 06-25-2001: Message edited by: Charon ]
