OK here is the deal.
Each week, a staffer put's his setup in. They each have some freedom as to what they would like to run, within reason.
We do not have the same abilities as the MA does, auto win the war map resets etc.
Many folks have suggested that the arena needs to have some sort of point, some objective.
Otherwise all it is is a 2 sided limited planeset dueling arena.
I have said this dozens of times concerning the debate between strategic players vs dogfighters or basetakers vs furballers:
While the latter can occur within a game that has the former, the reverse is not true.
No one is saying that if all you want to do is furball, that you can't just fly around and shoot down planes.
That is fine, but my personal opinion is that there needs to be a place for all different styles of gameplay for the arena to be successful.
The objectives listed and the "orders" posted, (perhaps I should have used the word suggestions instead) are there for those who choose to play a strategic game.
There is no perfect setup. Some problems always come up. The downtimes for ords have been shortened, as that seemed to be a bone of contention, so now ords will come back up sooner.
The AvA is not the MA. We have 2 countries enabled and specific planesets and we cannot use the automatic tools that are present there. We are a scenario type of arena but the AvA is also not the SEA, we are a 24/7 arena and HTC doesn't want us to compete with the SEA.
We are also not the DA with limited country specific planes.
If you think it's easy to thread this needle then you haven't been paying attention. We have never been able to please everyone and we never will.
We can develop some sort of written rules, but we are also limited there.
There has been mention in this thread about a "gentlemans" sportsmanship statement.
We once had such a description on the special events website, that said vultching, spawn camping etc were frowned upon in AvA.
Perhaps that is the one that is being referred to.
We were directed in no uncertain terms by HTC to remove it as they percieved it to be disparaging of the game and the MA.
I can assure you that Hitech takes a very dim view of anything that can be interpreted as derogatory to the MA or anything that sets up a we (AvA) vs they (MA) mentality.
Enforcing "gentlemens" rules is a no go. Encouragement by example is probably the best thing that can be done in this area.
However, harrassment and insulting others is a different thing entirely.
Two last points I will make, the AvA staff is not a "borg collective" we are individuals with different opinions. These are mine and I am responding because this is my setup.
Lastly, everyone wants a decent population in the AvA. No one wants to log into an empty arena.
So where do you think these people are going to come from?
Think about that before you ridicule the MA players.
