In FSO do you have Dar Bars or Radars? No you do not... What the heck is so different in the main arenas when HQ go's down?
I will tell you what is different; FSO gameplay and MA gameplay are vastly different setups. FSO typically has over 200 players, organized in squads, all funneled into a handful of target areas for a short period of time. The targets are known and defended. Essentially, FSO is specifically designed to almost guarantee combat for a majority of the participating players. This kind of a design does not require dot dar or bar dar to be successful.
MA gameply, on the other hand, is almost the exact opposite. During many times of the day the total numbers of players are a small fraction of FSO participation. This smaller number can be spread over an entire map. Many players fly individually and not in organized squads. Many players are not looking for combat, and instead want to sneak around the map hitting targets unopposed. A certain number of these will run or bail at the first sign of opposition. This is simply one of the downsides of the greater benefit of having a "sand box" style of arena where players can do whatever they want, whenever they want. However, it is not always conducive to being able to find and engage in combat. Having bar dar and dot dar helps with this situation, so that players don't have to spend a majority of their play time just trying to find the enemy. This, as I said above, is simply not the case with FSO. The two aren't even close to being the same thing.
Therefore, having bar dar and dot dar in the MA is an important part of good MA gameplay. One player being able to grief an entire side by taking an HQ (all radar) down is bad for gameplay. It's as simple as that.
One of the reasons I left the game is that my play time in the MA was only during low pop hours. It got to the point (especially with the rise in dar/HQ griefing) that I only enjoyed FSO and the MA was largely a waste of my time. When I could not participate regularly in FSO, I left the game. The MA is the heart of the game, where most of the players spend most of their time, and must be set up to encourage fighting rather than avoiding it, IMO, or the game will continue to suffer for it.
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Ryno
p.s. I find it rather hypocritical that you start your post off by calling everyone supporting the HQ downtime change "whining wimps" while later in your post you support a coding change you'd like to see to resolve the same issue.
