You know what's really funny? All the talk on this board about the good ol' days and These Kids Today and what have you cut be cut and pasted into any one of about four different boards I follow intermittently on hobbies ranging from Cowboy Action Shooting to movie prop/replica collecting.
IIRC, I started playing AW in 1995 or 1996 and by the time I'd been in it for 3 months you heard all the same complaints.
Gavagai is right - the game may change, but the biggest change is the perception of the player.
As for my perspective, here's a few things I've noticed:
1) Anyone who complains about the behavior of a "newbie dweeb" who wouldn't fight when the complainer tried to jump him with a 262 or F4U-4 and a 5k alt advantage needs a good whap to the head with a clue-by-four. You think newbs flying uber planes is the problem? Well, when was the last time you saw a newb in a 262 or Tempest? Of course most of the vets don't stick with perked planes all the time, but if the newbie is getting slammed by much superior planes every so often, how can you blame him for taking the best ride he can, looking to fight at an advantage, and running when he doesn't have one? What else does every 262 do?
2) In a similar vein, if you're that good of an experienced vet, instead of whining about how "these kids today" - the ones with the .05 k/d ratio - aren't taking on a bigger challenge, why don't YOU look at it as a challenge for yourself? They don't play the way you want? Well, you don't play the way THEY want. Why do you think you're right and they're wrong? And if you're such a good pilot and they're such pathetic ones, why can't you beat them when they have alt and numbers?
3) 90% of this stuff boils down to SA. SA was by far the most important skill for a pilot in WW2, every top ace I know of said it was THE secret to their success. I understand that the game is not a
strategic simulation, that base taking is just a frame to make battles happen, but saying the game is all about ACM and 1-1 duels to the exclusion of everything else is ridiculous. Everything here - incoming hordes vs. a few defenders, getting bounced from 10k up, getting picked and gangbanged, enemies running away when they lose the advantage - is a
tactical scenario that every WW2 pilot had to face, and dealing with them was every bit as much a part of the pilot's skill set as ACM and gunnery, as was teamwork. No, this isn't a war or even a war simulation, but if you're trying to simulate the tactics, skills, and technical challenges of flying WW2 fighters, 1-1 co-e duels are a poor way to do it.
4) Because of # 3, I like the game the way it is now a heck of a lot more than I'd like it the way some here seem to want it - essentially, just a bunch of DAs. I'm glad to have a decent co-e 1-1 fight sometimes, but I'd get bored very quickly if that's all there was.
5) Two things that are worse than anything anyone here is complaining about: alt-monkeys and whole-country gangbangs.
Alt-monkeys are worse because you can't avoid them. If you don't like 40-plane base captures, just fly somewhere else from where they're attacking. At any given time there are always going to be more people not doing that than doing it, and the ones doing it are all concentrated on 1 or 2 bases. But you can't avoid the alt-monkeys (there always seem to be 1 or 2 everywhere), you can't fight them if they won't commit, and you know if you try to fight someone else you'll just get picked. And who wants to spend 90% of their stick time just climbing, climbing, climbing? (Apparently some people...)
The country gangbangs are bad because they don't just offer an alternative to fighting, they make it all but impossible. It's one thing to fight against the odds, but another when you've got 2-1 odds or worse everywhere on the map and, as if that isn't enough, escorted raids of 3, 4, 5 Lanc boxes at 20,000 feet porking every field within 30 miles of the front. It's all fine getting a big local advantage, but what's the fun of making it impossible for the other side to put up a fight anywhere on the map? And in a 3-player game the whole ENY system is just pointless, because the advantage depends on the interaction of the countries more than the raw numbers for any one of them. Getting slammed everywhere while still having a 20 ENY is just ridiculous.
5) Vulching uppers is establishing local air superiority. Vulching people trying to land is just pathetic (assuming that "vulching" = going in on a new target, not finishing off someone you were already fighting). What are you hoping to accomplish?
6) Has it occurred to you that that guy is "hiding in ack" because he knows if he doesn't he'll get slammed by someone from 10k up before he can get any speed and alt to fight? Because that's what happened to him within 10 seconds the last three times he left the ack? If you're complaining because you can't find anyone willing to enter a "fair fight," come down to his alt and burn off some e, then see if he'll come out of the ack. Or back off a couple of miles and let him come up. (And if someone in a faster plane goes through ack to lose you, all he's really doing is saving you both the bother of a 10-minute race you won't win anyway. If he's in a slower plane, you should have killed him before he got there, and if you don't want to deal with his ack, what are you doing so close it to begin with?)
7) Just don't tune to 200 unless you're amused by it. And if you do find it amusing, why complain about it?
F### the forum. Just fly.
That's all the ranting I can do today.
