The unfortunate result of months of practice by folks trying to figure out the new field captures and anti stealth settings has been the "mother of all hordes" group effort. 
I am afraid that the emphasis in future changes will only address the "difficulty" in base capture (+ / - ). Making base capture more obtainable with lesser numbers will be a good start. It should offer more battles. However, it could also lead to frequent map resets, and milkrunning.
What worries me the most, is that the "stale" portion of stalemate may have already sailed. Players have expressed their fatigue over repetitive rolls in a number of different styles or preferences of options. I know this may sound harsh or (some other large word, that means I don't have a clue about the complexities involved), but I would love to see this game step up, once again and offer just the sort of tweak in game play, that simply is enjoyable to players at all skill levels. 
There will always be staleness in this game. It is what generates the evolution of the players. For most players it goes something along the line of..
1. find the game and get all excited jump into a fighter of your dreams and promptly get shot down IF you get into the air
2. find that the game has a huge learning curve and gravitate to something easier, like bombers.
3. find that after flying bombers a few weeks that you can hit anything you want 90% of the time with the lazer site and the only way to get any one to attack you you have to be under 10k. This becomes stale and boring.
4. find that GV's are challenging, getting up at a camped site is frustrating, but in a few weeks you learn how to get into a spot for camping yourself. After the next 100 or so kills without the other guy being able to shoot back at you you get bored and the stalness sets in again.
5. finding a squad of friends you join the missions. Your good at bombing and GVing so you can help out taking bases. You start flying fighters again, heavy now, and learn how to dive bomb. After a few months your group gets pretty good and can take almost any base in 5-25 minutes depending on the defense. This becomes stale as it is now just a repeat every mission....if it works why change it right?
6. find that your squad breaks up as each moves on looking for something else to break up the "staleness". While flying fighter and dive bombers you started to get kills. You start looking for fights to challenge yourself. This is the longest and hardest phase for most. Some become very good very fast, others (like me
) take forever and hope the day will come soon that they can think they are near the top of their game.
During all of this anyone can stop and be happy at any phase of the game. Some stop at the GV's and just excel at it, while they still have trouble getting a plane off the ground. Being content is ok, but most people will get bored eventually and look for something more.
Bruv, please take this as a compliment. When you have achieved 3 top seats in fighter categories, and I have seen you land greater than 17 kills twice within 15 minutes, I will have to say that your skill level far exceeds that of the typical town porker. What most of us want to do is simply shoot stuff and look good doing it. Getting locked in a 60 minute battle over a single airfield, multiplies the odds for most of us loosing cartoon lives. The appeal of the NOE, and the horde has been the likelihood of survival and success. There you go, maybe that is the key, better chances at survival. How does one achieve that? Reducing 262 availability? Reducing the popularity of the 109K4? Reducing the range of the La7? Reducing the one shot killz from a Tiger opponent? Scary to think, but we have the mid war arena and until LW got shut down yesterday, it has been difficult to find a fight there, but it fits the above scenario.
Proximities of towns and spawns are specific to maps and make them challenging in different ways, and I agree we are not clear on where challenge becomes more fun or less fun, so having a mix could be beneficial.
How about instead of "dumbing down" the game so people can survive, maybe, just maybe these people learn a few things like oh I don't know...
1. SA learn to avoid the 262, 109K, or LA7 as he makes his pass. Target fixation kills almost as many pilots as enemy do.
2. how to park a tank, or hide so a 1 shot is more difficult. Some of the old LTARs where very good at this. Poor Killz tried to teach me once. While I understand the hows and why, I've never put in the time to get it right, but it is possible. There must be a reason people like DR7 are 3 to 1 in k/d
