Each one of us players are hypocrites. For every post admonishing some act I have had those same posters do exactly what they profess to dislike to me. When I first read your post I probably took it the wrong way from how you intended it; however, it remains hypocritical. I am not sure if you are advocating a certain play style or not, but does it really matter?
How to express myself intelligently will be a real challenge as I am not that intelligent. First, either it is a game or it is not. You (collective)advocate a certain "historical" context towards gameplay if I understand you correctly. On the other hand, you (singular) are an advocate of total "gaminess" as regards S.A.P.P., ie. landings.
I can understand the desire for a little silliness, I can understand the desire for history, but who is to decide what the right mix is? What I can not understand is the utter disregard for respect of others. I think I introduced a new topic into the conversation. Sorry, but to me respect is the crux of the problem with this and many other games. There are a lot of morally reprehensible posts between players and 'cartoon" acts that would have been grounds for criminal charges in real life.
If you talked to Chuck Yeager the 51 was the cats meow, Bob Johnson would say the Jug, each pilot who threw themselves in an aircraft is going to have a preference. I fail to see the point of emphasing this pilots regard for your chosen plane set as relevent to the way the post was made. That came out bad, I guess your post could have been written with less bias in it. I appreciate any bit of history I come across, but am suspect when I sense an underlying prurpose in the way the information is presented.
I am sure I am way off base, because I tend to read negativity in much too large a percentage of posts in these forums. Basically, the unwritten rules I see here are: if you have been playing longer than someone else, your entitled to be louder than they are and therefore must be right in your opinions; the higher your virtual score is the more abusive you are allowed to be; finally, since you are basically annonymous, you are free to act contrary to accepted social norms.
It is such a shame that something so potentially benificial is always ruined by those very users who can benefit from it. Maybe this post should have been it's own thread, but I am more and more disenfranchised with the direction that social interaction is going. So who can change this? Each one of us can, if willing, the problem is that many more are not willing. It really is a shame to continually read such negative replies to innocuos questions, opinions, and ideas.
I was surprised by this post as most I have read are very open minded and am probably just missing the point because the point was not written in a manner I could undestand. How much does it really matter at the end of the day how others play, what is more important I think is how they interact. Have fun. <S>
