What Ever Happened to NOE??

[bustr]

People who are going to hide are going to hide. People who are going to fight will do the same. Hiders = 80% while Fighters = 20%. You cannot force people to become fighters if they want to feel safe. But, you can manage them based on wanting to feel safe.

If you make them feel safe as a hoard sneaking around doing things together. At least they are delivering themselves to an eventual known location where they can be fought against. Odds are they will capture more fields than you can kill them all over time. This group success will keep them coming back. They will never think or act out of a kiddy game fighter's motivation. As so I doubt most of you would never long for being dropped into a hot LZ to get shot at by angry people in the real world.

Aside from the 8th AAF and British Bomber Command's Bomber streams into the continent. Secrecy and sneaking to the target as much as possible was the norm for other endeavors. The job of the aircrew was not to die but, to destroy the target and enemy. The radar numbers in the MA once in force for NOE minimums allowed the 80% to feel somewhat secure, and for that they created constant action in the MA. We no longer have that kind of constant action by the 80% and lower numbers.

You cannot turn an apple into an orange no matter how much you remodel the kitchen.

[Wiley]

Bustr, you keep talking about NOE's creating 'action'.  I was around for a while before the radar changes, I remember what defense was like.  The NOE more often than not would come in unseen, pop, flatten the hangars, deal with the few guys that managed to get up, level the town and capture.

During that timeframe from pop to capture, it was extraordinarily rare that defense had time to up from the next field over and get there before the field had been captured and the enemy disappeared.  It was like playing whackamole.

At least with the way it is now, you can see them coming and have a chance to mount a reasonable defense.  Most people don't utilize the opportunity, but that's on them, not because it's not possible.

Wiley.

[bustr]

You see the lower end of the 20% coming because they are willing to be seen to fight today. I only see the 80% if the mission is big enough for them to feel safe.

The vTards were all 80% when they started. But, because they felt safe they created activity for years. Years before them missions were NOE along with newbies running NOE missions getting experience along with confidence. Success breeds confidence. The 20% whined and got the radar changed just like you are complaining about finding the NOE missions was like playing WhakAMole to defend against. Waaa it's unfair, I can't find all the easy to kill 80% who won't stand and let me slaughter them...boohoo Hitech make them stand and fight or I'll cancel my subscription and call you names on the Internet.

Ok now you have fewer missions and fewer players because the 20% got the game tweeked into a big boys only play pen. How do you think those 80% who might have graduated into the 20% got the breathing room, cheap kills and confidence to graduate? And all the 20% whined about easy acess to the 80% instead of agreeing to meet somewhere and 20% themselves to death. Instead the 20% spends most of it's free time harvesting 80% or whining about the strategies the 80% come up with to avoid getting annihilated by 20%.

The old NOE provided the Level1 easy mode for newbies to survive long enough and achieve something to feel good about staying in the game. Now the MA is Level100 from the moment you spawn dominated by Whining Bosses of death crying for the lost herds of 80%.

 You cannot turn an apple into an orange no matter how much you remodel the kitchen. Learn how to cook with both fruit instead.

[Lusche]

Ok now you have fewer missions and fewer players because the 20% got the game tweeked into a big boys only play pen.

I don't agree with that implication of having less players nowadays because the NOE was changed. The "loss' of players (which may simply be a lack of getting enough new ones into the game) is a process that had been largely a gradual one and started long before any changes to the NOE were made.

[bustr]

Take away all the hiding places for the hiding prone and they will hide somewhere else not in your game. The 80% are hiding prone in all of life's endeavors be it in a real world hot LZ or in a My Pretty Pony jousting match online.

The old NOE minimums were the only easy mode in the MA that the 80% could hide from the 20% and accomplish something. Sure it was abused. But, we had people mindlessly day after day happily hiding on the maps in large groups taking undefended bases accepting occasionally they would get caught. And it didn't take much to tell if an NOE was at the dar ring. Most of the 20% just wanted the 80% to make them not have to work very hard at finding them. The 80% do not want to fight the 20% in heads up fights. They loose badly, and don't want to keep feeding themselves to the 20%. Most of them also don't have either the time or the interest to live in the DA unlike the 20%. All they want to do is login and go piu, piu, piu.

The vTards were a case study in what motivates, and coping strategies that the 80% uses to stick it out in a game like this dominated by Level100 Whining Death Bosses.

At some point the game has gotta cater to the 80% or the 20% is gonna be awfully lonely by themselves on our monstrosity maps whining at each other about how the 80% cowards killed the game by leaving it. 20% always think about this game from their perspective. It's good to be one of the swingers of the stick opposed to the recipient of the beating. After awhile people get tired of being beaten and leave if you eliminate their coping mechanisms.

[Krusty]

Oh, brother....

I guarantee you 100% the only reason hordes went NOE was to steamroll a surprised target and they produced NO "action" at all. They would find the most ignored field to attack, find the quietest front, and hide the entire time. Even after steamrolling a field and capturing it in seconds, they were timid sheep and avoided all contact with the enemy.

Blaming it on the radar settings is rubbish, and an obvious scapegoat.

If you changed fields so that hangars couldn't be taken down 100%, but left radar the same, NOE hordes would disappear just as readily. They can't stand up to the light of day. It's not the game settings, it's the quality of character of the people doing it.

The lack of such activity is a boon to the game. NOT a detriment.

[Aspen]

It seems folks can look out the same window and see vastly different views.  I'll take 300 more players at prime time and they can NOE or spawn 110s in a dive at 6000' over the town with bombs hot.  I just want stuff to shoot at.

[Krusty]

It's a false assumption to assume that since people don't NOE they are no longer playing. The same people are here, just doing something else.

Blame the WORST economic downturn in our country's history for the lack of players. That's what happened to me, for sure. I've heard comments to let me know I'm not alone, too.

[The Fugitive]

The vTards were a case study in what motivates, and coping strategies that the 80% uses to stick it out in a game like this dominated by Level100 Whining Death Bosses.

No, they were a case study in what happens to players who stick with the same old plan (even tho it worked for them) and never took the time to advance, or explore any alternatives.

THEY GOT BORED AND LEFT.

Sure not all of them are gone. You can see a few here and there that made the change to try something else with in the game. It happens to all the "big" squads that used numbers to roll bases instead of skill. The BOPs, that big squad that "tunes" should up with all his alter egos (tunes 1 tunes 2 tunes 3 and so on). Even people with no imagination will get bored doing the same thing over and over. And so it happens with them.... as so many others.

Im sure some time in the future as long as the game is still around, some one will come up with a great idea to take large numbers of players NOE all over the map taking base after base and believing that they thought of it first.

[Tank-Ace]

Bustr, I'm seriously starting to think you have no idea what the HELL you're talking about. Literally, your portrayal of the old NOEs is about as idealized and glorified as it can be without making even Hitech want to beat you to death with your own keyboard.

You also seem to be fond of this "20%" straw man you've erected. As though Lusche, and Fugitive and I simply wanted to do away with NOE so we could gorge our kill stats on noobs. I can't say for Lusche, but I know Fuge used to fly the P-39 a fair bit. And aside from when I'm defending, or headhunting, I typically fly planes like the 109E, Ki-61, etc. why in God's name would we do that if we're trying to max our kills?

I mean you have bits and pieces right, but it really does seem as though our drive to be better than before is just so incomprehensible to you, that you've had to fabricate this fantasy world to make sense of it.

[Wiley]

The old NOE minimums were the only easy mode in the MA that the 80% could hide from the 20% and accomplish something.

False.  The horde works just fine to accomplish the same thing, plus they might have a chance of actually seeing an enemy aircraft once in a while.

Wiley.

[Lusche]

As though Lusche, and Fugitive and I simply wanted to do away with NOE so we could gorge our kill stats on noobs.

Just for the record, I did not lobby for such a thing. And directly after the change I stated here that I found it too harsh now.
Actually I have always enjoyed fighting against NOE attacks, but that's just a personal view. I know that many were entirely frustrated with it.


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For the "more chance to fight a altitude horde than a NOE hord"e argument: I'm really not sure if I can agree with that from experience.
If not detected at takeoff, a P-38 hangars smash strike most of the time does not meet more resistance than the NOE of old, as most players only start to pay attention when the base starts to flash and the dots appear on dar. And unlike defending a NOE, any defender upping at that point or later is at a decisive E disadvantage, and the 38's will just swoop down and drop the hangars with ease, having plenty of E to zoom back up and start the pickings. With a NOE raid attacking you are on a somewhat more even footing in terms of E.
Unless they flying into an area already filled with enemy fighters due to a prolonged battle in the area, I never see 15k hangar smash Jabo raids being stopped before they reach the target. I see much more of a 'problem' in them than in the old NOE raids.


And someone mentioned the "whack-a-mole" issue again... jest, that's been the problem of the NOE's but still is the same problem now. As I elaborated earlier, that's not a result of the missiontype but at the uniform 'worth' the bases have for the final victory which is just based on mere base count.

[drmoo]

what a joke we run at least 1 noe a day

[Wiley]

For the "more chance to fight a altitude horde than a NOE hord"e argument: I'm really not sure if I can agree with that from experience.
If not detected at takeoff, a P-38 hangars smash strike most of the time does not meet more resistance than the NOE of old, as most players only start to pay attention when the base starts to flash and the dots appear on dar. And unlike defending a NOE, any defender upping at that point or later is at a decisive E disadvantage, and the 38's will just swoop down and drop the hangars with ease, having plenty of E to zoom back up and start the pickings. With a NOE raid attacking you are on a somewhat more even footing in terms of E.
Unless they flying into an area already filled with enemy fighters due to a prolonged battle in the area, I never see 15k hangar smash Jabo raids being stopped before they reach the target. I see much more of a 'problem' in them than in the old NOE raids.

I would respectfully submit there's a major distinction between people not paying attention having the horde come in and people not being able to respond until they see the NOE horde pop.  Regardless of what people actually do, it's possible to respond to a bardar.  It's not possible to respond effectively to a properly executed NOE smash and grab.

Funny how different people have such wildly different experiences.  From what I saw, NOE's were rarely ever stopped and if they were discovered, they never made a push, just died off and reappeared in another remote section of the map.  I see hordes halted every once in a while if enough people happen to be in tower and notice when the bardar starts brewing.  Sometimes it even turns into a fight.

Wiley.

[EskimoJoe]

what a joke we run at least 1 noe a day

Laughable. I'd estimate between 40-100 NOE missions per day in, er, the heyday.

I personally miss the NOE runs. There's nothing like the feeling of a large formation of aircraft flying side-by-side through gaps in trees, over hills and valleys, skimming waves and always watching our darbar to make sure we were clear. In essence, it was a 'thrill of the chase' feeling. Would we be intercepted? Would we happen upon an unsuspecting bomber returning from a long sortie, leading to a massive defense force waiting for us? It was always a gamble. From the 'pop' that lead us to break dar cover to get ords on town, the frantic slaughter of every single town building (the requirement in those days) while maintaining radio with our field CAP, to strafing the vehicles that made it out who might get our troops.

It was wild, and even in a virtual game, the experience was real enough to leave me wanting more and more.

These days, I personally believe that there are simply too few players, both in number and mindset. Krusty's opinion I find not only terribly incorrect, but plain ignorant.

Oh, brother....

I guarantee you 100% the only reason hordes went NOE was to steamroll a surprised target and they produced NO "action" at all.
They would find the most ignored field to attack, find the quietest front, and hide the entire time.
Even after steamrolling a field and capturing it in seconds,
they were timid sheep and avoided all contact with the enemy.

It's not the game settings, it's the quality of character of the people doing it.

Yes, as an NOE raider we would find the quiet fields as targets. Why? It's like throwing a surprise party for the other side.
Hiding the entire time? Sure, we remained hidden. Why give them the chance to spawn 20 wirbelwinds and 25 fighters when we were only coming in with 15 attack aircraft? We didn't want their kills to be easy. Did this produce "no action at all"? Certainly not. It was action from takeoff to landing for us. Did it lead to a giant furball of "action" for you? Occasionally, yes, but not all the time. As far as "avoiding all contact with the enemy" goes, this one 'dings' my Krusty-meter. We loved contact with the enemy. We loved strafing ground vehicles, we loved when a handful of fighters were waiting for us, and we loved coming out on top, regardless of whose favor the odds were stacked against (ours, or theirs).

To say that it was the quality of character of people doing it, is simply shameful and in my opinion, a filthy thing to say. It's statements like that which make me lose all respect for an opinion that has been made. This is a game, and just because a group of players doesn't play the way you want them to, doesn't mean they don't have high-quality character in some way, shape, or form. It's blatantly disrespectful.

I will agree that certain groups did lack many basic qualities, particular the =v= group, but they weren't ever a NOE horde type. We had fun shooting them down, and they had fun being shot down, as far as I'm concerned.