Scenario:
I see an aircraft approaching, with no other friendlies or enemies around. It's essentially a 1v1. The aircraft, obviously planning on using angles tactics, decides to start pulling a lead turn early in hopes of gaining angles. This gives me two bits of information before the fight (merge) happens:
- My opponent is planning on spending his energy in hopes for an angles fight
- My opponent will not be able to hit me head-on due to his choice in tactics
Therefore, I can do one of two things:
A: I can shoot him as he passes, as he has no way to shoot me back and end the fight quickly (as the end goal is killing him)
or...
B: I can ignore the shot he has presented me, knowing he couldn't hit me even if he tried, and spend the next 5-10 minutes to end the fight (as the end goal is killing him)
Maybe in the delusional minds of a few, there is no value in a front-quarter shot. The fact is, both end with the player dying, which is the end goal. Why a player would cry and complain and rant about dying faster instead of slower is quite hilarious and illogical.
In our fight recently you had the opportunity to HO me as our merge was pretty close to head on, you at least had the chance for one of those rudder kick shots, but you didn't. Was it because you didn't want a fight, or you did?
It doesn't matter either way the point I was trying to make was that while the game has many options available to be used, todays players are using a very few. Missions are bare bones with nothing other than "grab a hvy fighter and flatten every thing", and "fights" if you want to call them that are nothing more than jousts by most players.
The old days had players immersing themselves in pretend WWII. Flying in formation, high caps over the buff streams zig-zagging back and forth to cover the main approaches to the buffs from enemy fighters. Using waypoints and rendezvous points for missions. Defending territory and capping bases. There was always something going on, a mission here, some defense there. Today not so much. How often do you here players call out "Look out that is such and such a squad hitting that base", it was common place and made the hunting a bit easier
Todays game has become far to one dimensional the way its played, and those few things that they do will become boring quick enough.