These are my top 5 things that would fix the "fun" and add "more players" to the game.
1. Smaller MA maps, or MA maps with bases that are no more than 15-17 miles apart. Fights and battles would escalate, ganging would decrease, base capturing would be more strategic, and it would be quicker to find fights and have fun. This would eliminate complaints about the 12 hour rule because fights would be much easier to find.
2. Set H2H back up. Or, give players a chance to play H2H for 3 months and then give them the payment screen. This way players can take advantage of the game and learn to play it, only in small 8 player arenas. After 3 months you will get the players who are very interested in still playing, and these players will have a semi understanding of the game so they won't feel lost in the MA. H2H was a huge impact into why I enjoyed this game so much. 2 weeks just isn't enough to time to convince players their 15 a month is worth it.
3. Make HQ more challenging to destroy and create a new functionality for it. What many others have said about the radar and darbars and dots on the map are true. Change the strats to the old times.
4. Graphics obviously, which you guys are working on, so that's cool.
5. Better strategic marketing of the game. I'd show a TV commercial but maybe put it on different channels rather than just the military channel. History channel, comedy central, Spike, FX, disovery, channels like that, or even as a youtube commercial if its affordable. You will capture a different audience, but most people don't really watch or have the military channel. I'd also have one of our fellow community members design and create the commercial.
Only thing I disagree with baldeagle about is that players have too many life events going on. That is a small figure. The gameplay has run stale do to small number of fights, and long flights to bases that take 15 min only to find no one upping or a 190 who doesn't even want to fight. Then ganing occurs because your friendlies dont want to fly that far again and you get stuck fighting the 8 enemies that just have upped. Shorter distances to feilds would excite gameplay and create better fights.
The darbars are poor representations of what is actually going on. I won't up if I see 8 green people at my base but see a tiny red darbar. If the darbar where to look larger I may up a plane. Sometimes I just dont think it's accurate. I see a darbar that looks small and then see 7-8 enemy planes coming in. It should be larger. But these are things I notice and on a map with far away bases, it makes it a huge decision whether to up and hopefully find a fight after 15 min of flying (or get ganged because friendlies dont want to fly that far) or to not up and wait for the dar to get bigger somewhere else.
