These complaints are all about dueling in the MA. Duels in the MA are fun but you are complaining that someone who didn't agree to duel you won't duel you. You are asking for the MA game to be easier. Whether for score or for fun, you want less difficulty catching the bandit.
Here's how you do that. You make yourself an attractive target. Instead of changing everyone else you change yourself.
If you'd rather have an even fight just find one other person that wants to fight and duel them.
The thing I really like about the MA is if there are enough opponents available, you can to a large degree create your own circumstance.
I altmonkey like a mofo for a couple reasons. For one thing, I don't like bombers being out of my reach, and I'm one of the relatively few with the patience to climb to them and hunt them. The ability to climb for a long time shouldn't give red guys a free pass into my airspace.
Secondly, in the absence of high alt buffs to hunt, I like to prioritize the guys that are BnZing the friendlies below me. The ability to climb for a long time shouldn't give you a free pass to hunt and bully my low slow friendlies.
In the absence of high enemies, then I turn to whatever's below me. If he's covered up, I leave him be. If he starts to run from the friendlies, I quite often turn him/kill him.
I very rarely run into a situation where someone can escape me without help. I do that by flying aircraft that it is difficult to run from, and putting myself in a position where they are going to find it difficult to do so.
The tendency I've seen the last little while in the MA though, I've found fairly confusing. Two guys that really stuck out to me that I can remember in the last month or so did things that just made no sense to me.
One guy went over me cruising. I figured he hadn't seen me and started trying to sneak him from below. I was climbing very aggressively below him, and was about 1.5k directly below him doing about 150mph when I saw him roll for a belly check most likely because he heard my engine.
If he had chosen to do so, I was in an outstanding position for him to attack me. Low speed, in a climb, just about the right amount of distance between us for him to flip over, drop in and smack me. About the only way I could have been in a more disadvantageous position is if I was about 200 yards dead ahead of him and asleep.
Instead of attacking, he actually dove past me and headed for his ack.
The second one merged with me with about a 3k alt advantage, didn't get any kind of advantage on the first merge, and immediately dove out for his ack.
Both times, we were the only planes within a sector of us for either side. I just don't get why one wouldn't try to kill the other guy regardless of skill level.
Actual "dueling" in the MA rarely happens unless it's over quickly, per my sig.
In some aspects, I do agree with Tumor. You can find HO/Pick/Vulch whines from the very start of the game. It's not recent. I wouldn't say HT rewards suicidal gameplay exactly. I would say that he doesn't prevent it, likely because there's no real way to do that without some kind of really gamey change to the gameplay that would make it less realistic than it is.
What I've noticed though lately is for whatever reason, lower numbers seem to bring out a higher proportion of people who are looking to either hit buildings unopposed in some way or attack planes from on high seemingly preferably if the opponent is afk.
I think the easy solution is for numbers to get up. People are going to play the way they play, but with enough people in the arena there's generally enough around that play in the way their opponents want them to play. That allows them to interact with each other and find fun.
Wiley.
