Originally posted by Delirium
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Also, when I said 'I blame the vets', it was mostly aimed at the score whoring from 'vets' that is so prevelent in AH today.
I don't think the pattern comes from the vets much at all. It may have more to do with the environment itself being much more crowded than it must have been in the past.
Yesterday I got talking with the CO of a squad that plays a very different game, oriented completely toward staying alive and getting their squad ranked. These guys are not the "vets" you've been talking about -- when I looked up their squad, I didnt recognize any of the names and it turns out that only 10%-15% are in the top THOUSAND for fighter rank. And mind you, they play for rank.
The CO -- not a kid -- said he teaches his guys to "fly like they did historically." To him, this means don't engage alone, don't get in unless you have an overwhelming tactical advantage, don't take risks, keep your focus on the immediate goal (ie, getting base captures, scoring vehicle points, killing enemies). An entire squad, measuring itself by score...and chasing it not by "filling in the blanks" with PT rockets, but by deliberately avoiding challenges.
Now its their $15, and if that's what they want to do then its no skin off my back. But I think it shows that there are subsets in AH that have given up on the kind of combat success that the early vets pursued. And talking to him reminded me of the many conversations I've had with gys who arent all that interested in getting better at combat.
I think many players have been overwhelmed by the learning curve, and have tried to find any way they can to feel successful, even at the cost of giving up on ACM. In my few years here, I've run into more than a few who've literally said "I'll never be good in fighters" and have no interest trying any more. It's like "learned helplessness," when Pavlov's dogs got shocked without reason or recourse enough that they stopped trying to get away, even when the straps were removed. But in this case, rather than stop playing, they've found a niche, or a squad, that lets them have fun without developing more skills.
The vets may have helped indirectly with the "learned helplessness" -- its overwhelming to come up against guys with a decade's ACM. Yesterday after having 3 "good fights" where my rolling scissor, or energy management, or gunnery wasnt quite good enough, I decided to go someplace the Muppets weren't flying. Multiply that feeling by 10, and take away the deliberate learning I've tried to get, and you can see that AH will make many feel like a caveman trying to understand PC design.
I think thats the nature of the problem. A huge community, an overwhelmingly difficult challenge, and a desire to feel successful. I'm not sure there's a solution for that, unfortunately.
