Theres alot of discussion on how accurate gunnery, flight models, ectera are on this board. In my opinion, the planes seem to do approximately what i would expect them to do under the circumstances I put them in, so this is not really an issue for me.
What is an issue, however, is that having a realistic plane is useless if it is in a totally unrealistic combat environment. Basically, there have been NO gameplay innovations made in aces high, it is just a (much) better air warrior. HiTech can obviously make a very good flight model, good damage model, and nice graphics, but wheres the gameplay? Personally, I am tired of generic countries. Flying with spitfires on the same side as 109s doesnt make sense to me. It doesn't "immerse" me. Flying solo, free for all doesn't immerse me. Its not what happened in WW2. If we care so much about flight models, then why not about realistic combat enviironments. The whole base capture thing is kinda old, its been done before. Why not have strike packages corrdinated by either people or the server, that set up missions? Like at 8:30, there will be a strike on (X) consisting of x p51s and y B17s. the p51s job is to make sure they get there to strike, they all fly as a group. Then the coordinator on the other side (again human or computer) detects incomnig enemy aircraft and issues a message to all the people on that team: Alert, incoming aircraft detected, over (city name) heading (insert here). Intercept will be launched in 3 minutes from (x airbase), man your planes. Then theres a sense of purpose for the luftwaffe: theres a bigass flight of incoming enemy, ive gotta sto em or theyre gonna bomb our side! And the p51s on escort have a similar mission, to make sure those incoming fighters dont hurt those b17s. If you die on your mission, you will have to wait until there is another planned sortie, you cannot just respawn at will, so there will be consequences to suicidal attacks, it would put more of a sense of "fear" in you, not that it could ever approach teh fear of real combat.
Basically, this base capture stuff, IMHO, sucks. Its a bunch of unorganized people taking off in a simulation engine that could do much more and deathmatching. All the "hard core" flight sim players admonish quake players, but what is going on in AH is very similar to anything you will find in a FPS, just in realistically modeled airplanes instead of little guys with MP5s
Anyways, i guess its time for me to stop ranting, but my trial time for AH is coming to a close, and I am probably not gonna subscribe. While the planes fly great, and the graphics are great, and the pilots are great, the lack or organization and purpose makes this a game with no real innovation over a game that is 6 years old, just a technologically updated version.
-Zigrat
