1Loki, If you had looked at the rest of the posts in the thread you would have come across a number of screen shots SHOWING HORDES IN ACTION, proving that they do happen.
I never said hordes don't happen.
I said hordes don't and can't have the effect you claim they do, and I stand by that.
If there are 300 people in an arena, and 50 of them are all attacking one field, that still leaves 250 other players do do whatever they want at the other 99 fields.
There is no way you can be FORCED to fight against overwhelming odds, because even for the smaller maps the map is too big for any horde to dominate all or even most of it.
And the horde doesn't change the overall odds for your country. If there are 100 nits on there are 100 nits on; if half of them are all in one place on the map, that means there are half as many everywhere else on the map.
For the record, I'd have no interest in flying in 50-plane missions on a regular basis (it is fun once in a blue moon just to see that many planes in the air at once), because you're right, it isn't a challenge. This isn't about me at all. I'm not the one saying my game is being ruined.
And I'm not saying people should fly in 50-plane missions, or that people should enjoy flying in 50-plane missions, or that people should enjoy defending against 50-plane missions, or that there's something wrong with not liking to fly in or against a 50-plane mission.
I'm saying the existence of a 50-plane mission in one place of the map cannot possibly ruin the game of the other 250 players in all the other places on the map. It cannot happen. No matter how big they are they do not have that much reach or influence. And most "hordes" are smaller than that anyway.
This is different from most of the other lame behaviors discussed in this thread, because those aren't by definition confined to one little part of the map at any given time and consequently they aren't as easy to avoid as a horde is. If there are 100 HOing ramming kamikaze dweebs out of 300 people in the arena, then no matter what you do every 3rd plane you encounter is likely to be one. You can't tell who they are or where they are by glancing at the map. You can always see that the horde is a horde before you get too near them, so you always have the option to leave and go somewhere else where they aren't.