In a land far away and a long time ago, I flew a sim that decided to make changes to the Arena's. The existing MA became a mixed mode arena, where you would be fighting pilots who could choose to deliberately dumb down the flight mode. The only real mode only arena became the full time AvA Arena (up to this point, the MA had previously been 4 sided, MA-style capture-the-flag gameplay) - a 2 sided, Axis vs Allies MA-style capture-the-flag gameplay. This forced players to choose between flying the new AvA "Main" or to fly in the "Old Main" against pilots who might be using the fictional FM, forcing many people who really didn't want to to fly the "New" arena. Most of the arguments in this thread are reminiscent of the arguments made for doing so at that time over there, too.
The AVA primary arena format was one of the things that ruined the sim. It wasn't the only thing, but it sure did it's part to drive folks out. The biggest problem for me personally was signing in night after night after night to find that the Axis were way way down in numbers, and gritting teeth and flying the Dark side when what I really wanted to do was fly the F4U. Squads were torn apart by it, and eventually, a lot of players drifted away from the game. Many of them are here these days. GV's weren't nearly as large a part of the game as they are here, so the biggest problem was the discrepencies between the bombers, so an entirely new way of "bombing" was introduced, further increasing the "gaminess" of the sim. An RPS had been in place since I'd started flying, but this introduced additional issues, as the early part of the war would see pilots flying Axis for their day in the sun, and then the rest of the month you would see the few dedicated + the few "align themselves with the underdogs rather than doing what they really want" against the many.
HTC, I pray to God - saw what happened there, and it will never happen here.
A 2 sided Axis vs Allies arena is fun - for a little while. Day after day it's the pits. Add in stupid developers, and it hoovers dirty pond water.
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