The recent 12 hour country side switch rule, doesn't affect the way that I play, but I have observed complaints about how others were abusing a "short" side change time. So, the vast majority of players lost some freedom in order to "improve" the game play.
Its a load of rubbish, I've looked at a map plenty of times to see a huge mass of red dots imb to a base, it gets called out on country channel loads of people up to defend get some alt while the incoming hoarde stays 'NOE' oblivious to the fact they are fully visible to the people they are attacking, incoming hoarde is greeted with a defence, hoarde gets slaughtered, pondering c47s get slaughtered, whine goes up on 200 about spys being to blame, probably email gets sent to HTC about how spys ruin the game, rinse and repeat.
The bit that gets them angry is they were not able to sneak in relatively unopposed or not at all and capture the base or pork the base to set up a vulch, there is a common theme here were people want to take no risks for a reward. Be that through outnumbering your opponent, shooting him while he trys to up, or sneaking on to a base for a capture. They have made it as easy as possible for themselves but they still fail, the easy scapegoat is the 'spy' or someone who switched looking for the opposite of what they wanted ie some action or a fight, hes to blame it couldn't possibly their fault.
The ability to get better from a air combat perspective is sitting right there in front of them, a training arena with a population of around 5 on average, instead of trying to better themselves they blame imaginary excessive spying in the game, lazy lazy.
This is also reflected in certain special events were the point is to fight only a few sign up for these, the point for most players is to win not to fight to win, if they think they cannot have the odds loaded in their favour they will just not participate.
Hitech punishing those who seek to engage in a fight to sooth the paranoid egos of those who do not want to fight, and are to lazy to try and get better is completely unacceptable to me.