NOE would get people back into planes even if it will be running under radar. They will be back in a plane offering themselves as targets, which now they won't. You want any chance of numbers back, let the average players feel safe and good about themselves or they will not get out of the tower, guns, or wirbles to play with you. The game is mostly average people trying to have some fun in average ways. In the bad old days of NOE, a percentage got bored and became fighter pilots or gained enough experience and confidence that they can succeed at the game. NOE is the closest thing to easy mode the MA can offer to keep new and old players engaged.
You guys want targets and don't care about what it takes to create someone who can play the game confidently enough to give you a fight. You pay lip service to it and end up telling Hitech it's his problem that all the average players are hiding in manned guns. A few of you then want Hitech to punish them for it becasue some how your $14.95 is superior to their $14.95. So you don't get fights anymore and they don't pay Hitech $14.95 to be your personal victims. Right now there is no avenue for them to feel like they have half a chance at their "average skill levels and interests" to make it worth upping. Specially since you are waiting in stacks of sharks watching radar to put them right back in the tower almost every time they up. Until 2009 that is what NOE did for this game, gave average people the opportunity to do something every night with friends that didn't entail suicide by fights with Sharks. The game has devolved to fights with sharks or not much else, so not much else and sitting in manned guns is the norm unless there is an occasional hoard.
After hours, you can watch the map and tell by how plane icons move around the lone shark or an average player. Average players will not up for a lone shark and you gents have known this for the last almost 20 years. And you have spent that time yelling at Hitech that he has to force them to up or punish them for being cowards. So far he still likes their $14.95.
