Besides playing this game now for 16 years, I've spent the last two years doing something the egotists in this forum don't. To build terrains for everyone, not just the tiny clique of forum elitists. I had to spend two years lurking and listening to the average Joes who won't come to these forums. The average Joe has not changed in what he wants to do in the MA. The MA was changed to force him to be something he is not, nor wants to expend the effort to be. Average Joe is enamored of the idea of being a fighter pilot, while in reality he doesn't want to do more than follow a group to do something he feels reasonably safe with. While having the chance to accomplish something for his $14.95.
The average Joe pays Hitech money to accomplish average Joe things, and before 2009 there was a lot of Joe's paying subscriptions. Why else would Hitech have allowed this air combat game to evolve into a massive capture the flag game with a large GV culture? High end ACM air combat is only a tiny facet of the overall MA environment. Average Joe was happy flying in groups and taking bases while hidden under 200ft. A game culture larger than the ACM culture organically evolved around doing just that. Which means they paid the bills for HTC while all the time being insulted and derided publicly here in the forums by the smaller ACM culture for being average Joes.
You need the Joes doing that average Joe thing becasue it generates activity and a sense of accomplishment for the Joes. With minimum radar at 65ft the Joes stopped doing all of these average Joe things and lost interest in this game. The alternative is that learning curve to become one of the air combat elite which is turning people away. Because the average person loves the fantasy but, in practice looks for something easier and safer. (Think of how easy WT is.) So what became the next easy safe thing? Our GV culture or I wouldn't have wasted so much time developing micro terrain for them to keep them as customers for Hitech. Why did they revolt at the idea of GVDAR other than GVing met the criteria for an average Joe activity. The only people who benefit from the 65ft radar minimum are the air combat fights guys or, was supposed to be. Nine years later and they are still complaining about no fights and the real fact average Joe does not want to play this game on their terms. They left the game, took up GVing, or sit in 88's giving the ACM crowd the finger.
You need to get average Joe out of the 88 and feeling like he can capture bases again versus being 24x7 skoobie snacks for the air combat elitists. And they constantly complain to Hitech there are no fights becasue average Joe is a coward killing the game and he has to do something "to them" to make it right.
The only easy strategy ever was sneaking under the noses of people to pull off lighting raids and possible captures from 2001-2009. Hundreds of customers a night for 8 years kept logging in to do just that in the MA. Talk about bread and butter or the foundation of an institution. And when you look at other combat games with groups of people, just permutations of that average Joe kind of thing paying the bills. And a bunch of elitists accusing them of killing those games by being cowards and average.
Yes and we keep getting perma squelch requests to squelch all the mister average Joe's in the MA becasue their only sin is talking like average Joe's on range.
