Base flat, ack down and CV offshore. Thank goodness there are:

[Wiley]

Sure I could rack up a bunch of kills, big deal! I have thousands of kills. I'm looking for a fight.

Then why do you look for it in an arena that is designed around side-based Free For All style gameplay?

Wiley.

[The Fugitive]

Then why do you look for it in an arena that is designed around side-based Free For All style gameplay?

Wiley.

Because that is where is use to be found. The game is design around combat. It's the players who have corrupted that and made it be more about avoidence of combat and quick base capture to win Tue war.

We use to fight for bases in this game. Battles could last for hours as one team was determined to capture the base as much as the other team was determined to keep the base.

[Lusche]

Because that is where is use to be found. The game is design around combat. It's the players who have corrupted that and made it be more about avoidence of combat and quick base capture to win Tue war.

Well, then I think we can be glad  about the facts

- we have much more combat per base capture, more kills/deaths
- much less captured bases per individual player as well as played hours
- so many bases less sneaked by just 1-3 players

than ever before in AH 

[Butcher]

A horde is a horde, every country does it, whine less and eat more cheese.

[W7LPNRICK]

When I see this crap, I just go find another battle. I'm not going to add 1 kill to their vulches. Best way to stop this silly stuff is to "Take your ball & go Home". 

[Wiley]

Because that is where is use to be found. The game is design around combat. It's the players who have corrupted that and made it be more about avoidence of combat and quick base capture to win Tue war.

If one were asked to define 'What is the objective of the game?' when logging into AH and looking at that clipboard for the first time, what would the correct answer be, regardless of what the individual player's personal goal is?  In much the same way that the object of checkers is to remove all your opponent's pieces from the board, the object of Aces High is to win the war by owning 90% of your side's bases, and 20% of the opposing sides' bases.

This is how a good portion of the playerbase sees it, and they've been conditioned to do so by many other online games.

We use to fight for bases in this game. Battles could last for hours as one team was determined to capture the base as much as the other team was determined to keep the base.

Was the object of the game any different back then?  No, it was some of the players that made it so.  The playerbase has moved from mostly 'WWII online enthusiasts who happen to enjoy this WWII online game' to mostly 'gamers who happen to enjoy this WWII online game'.

The net result is still the same.  The playerbase does what it does now.  To be honest, I really have trouble believing things were THAT much different overall years ago, as it's easy to pull up forum posts from 2000-2002 saying the same thing you're saying here, referencing Air Warrior or WBs.  Maybe things were awesome for the first 3 weeks of Air Warrior or something, but I still have trouble believing it was ever that much different.

Wiley.

[grizz441]

Well, then I think we can be glad  about the facts

- we have much more combat per base capture, more kills/deaths
- much less captured bases per individual player as well as played hours
- so many bases less sneaked by just 1-3 players

than ever before in AH 

Quit sullying Fugitive's nostalgia with facts.

[The Fugitive]

Quit sullying Fugitive's nostalgia with facts.

You can twist the stats any way you want. I thought we were talking about combat in a combat based game.

Just because there are more kills per capture doesn't mean there was more combat. My guess is there was more vulching. How does 3 players sneaking a base make.more combat? the same goes.for less captures per person. Could just mean more vulches per capture, again NOT combat.

Stats are fun, but not always reliable.

[Zoney]

Because that is where is use to be found. The game is design around combat. It's the players who have corrupted that and made it be more about avoidence of combat and quick base capture to win Tue war.

We use to fight for bases in this game. Battles could last for hours as one team was determined to capture the base as much as the other team was determined to keep the base.

To be blunt, who is "we" and why dont you hook up with them and just fight all day in the DA then?

You've made it readily apparent what your opinion is on how everyone should be playing, now it's just whining.

[grizz441]

Stats are fun, but not always reliable.

Certainly more reliable than your hazy rose colored glasses recollection of the "good ol' days". 

[Lusche]

Just because there are more kills per capture doesn't mean there was more combat. My guess is there was more vulching.

We are not talking about a gradual change over time. The stats suddenly and massively changed with the changed settings:





Players do not change their behaviour, intentions and goals that suddenly from one tour to the next. And surely it's not that the whole arena suddenly decides to do nothing but vulch  from one month to the other.

Again: It's simply the settings which changed. Alll other things followed.

For almost all the time of AH, base capturing was a piece of cake compared to today's situation: Small towns, less ack, higher radar altitude. 1-3 players could and did sneak a lot of bases. NOE hordes had a far easier time to overwhelm the defense, and they used it. (When I joined 2005, I spend whole evenings with nothing than defending vs constant NOEs  on all fronts).
In 2003, during the golden years of AH1(!) we had tours with more than 9000(!) base captures (that's in the range of one base capture message per minute at peak times). If they had all been so bravely fought over for hours, i wonder why the k/h, kills per player, played hours per pilot weren't higher. Fact is: There wasn't more combat per player... just more captures. Many more.

Now that the EZ mode base capture requirements have been diluted, the grumpy old men should rejoice. But no. Of course there is something else. Instead of welcoming the fact that it's not that easy to sneak bases with a few players it's now "the horde"! As if the horde never happened before.... 



BTW, the last two days I went through a lot of old threads from 2001-2004 to help me to explain some stats... what I found was the very same stuff: "Nobody fights anymore" "game went downhill" "nothing but hordes" "gamers have taken over" on every second page. It's just as if todays people just copy & paste these old complaints 

[moot]

To be blunt, who is "we" and why dont you hook up with them and just fight all day in the DA then?

You've made it readily apparent what your opinion is on how everyone should be playing, now it's just whining.

This is the stupid non-argument that kills this discussion every time.   It's the same attitude that allows players to derail the trend of quality air combat in the arena by rolling 50 player hordes "because it's their 15$" "because we wanna hang out with friends" "because we can" "because no one should tell us how we should play".

[waystin2]

Thank you for the stats Lusche.  Interesting and insightful as usual Sir.

[SlapShot]

The 262 in AH is older than the 6 years I mentioned 

but what does M.A.W  mean?

Wow !!!! The Snailman stumped

Marine Air Wing lead by 40DogMAW was a Knight squad ... I was CO of the VMF-214 3rd MAW "Black Sheep" squadron back then. The difference then was when we showed up so did the Bishop's Arabian Knights ... and the fight usually raged on for hours ... and hours.

[dkff49]

I can tell you the gameplay has changed over the last several years that I have been in the MA's, which started right around the time that the H2H was closed up.

When I started you could find a nice low level furball going on for hours. By this I mean that fight raged between 2 bases that were neighboring each other. You did not have to fly over from a 3 base to ensure high alt to pick from. There would be maybe 10 players average from either side of the furball and it was non-stop TnB. This has left and this seemed to have disappeared and been replaced with the hordes. Yes hordes have always existed and yes before the current capture settings it was the sneak that seemed to kill them, but those nice furballs did exist in AH and were something that was fairly easy to find.

Granted the horde and base sneaks were not the only thing that changed that, the high alt pickers that fly over every single one that ever has a chance to get started also added to the death of what used to be the funnest part of AH (IMHO).

Either way 62 people to take a base is a little extreme and I personally will never up anything but a gun against something like that. I have no urge to fly BnZ into any fight except attacking bombers and I suck at that.