I disagree. I do not think the Melee has objectectives like an FSO or a Scenario, and that is exactly the point. I undertand there are bases that can be taken and objects that can be destroyed in the Melee. But no one really cares. Not like they do in a Scenario.
If there is a attack on a base in the Melee and it is a little too hard, they just off some where easier. If a field defense gets a little too harry, the defends to drift off to pick their nose on another part of the map.
It is mob rule, with no individual resposibility. No one has been assigned a task and feels resposibility to the team to get it done. It's just...whatever dude.
Since there is no real mission, then it comes down to peoples petty little dogfights. They expect you not to bomb their fighter hangar. They expect you to fly past their 1v1 and not interfere. Tankers throw a fit if you bomb their Veh hangar. They can't concieve you are actually trying to accomplish something, because its the Melee. Just go bomb some other base. Don't interrupt their little circle jerk with your mission hangup!
In a FSO where there are real missions and points to be captured within the frame which is ending in 1 hour, that kind of dilitante mentality would be impossible to even form. It would be nonsensicle.
You can't just say "Let's all pretend the Melee is an FSO." It doesn't work that way. There is no agreed upon structure or responsibility. It was a circle jerk when you logged in, and it will be a circle jerk when you log off. There is no sense of immediacy or the need to push through an attack or defense at any cost within the time constriants of a frame.
It's just a bunch of lolly-gagging and nose picking and don't dare ruin my little pointless dogfight.
One thing that I noticed WT doing is that even the death match modes have some sort of objective that will pop up on the screen, IE to attack a troop position in Sector X, defend a base in Sector A, etc. However WT fails to make those objectives actually MATTER, since victory is still largely tied to who has the most aircraft in the air when the game times out. All those objectives really do is determine the bonus at game's end.
This is something that Aces High's Main Arena, with the fact that getting shot down means you can just hop back in a new plane and rejoin the fight, could and arguably SHOULD take advantage of.
Imagine if the game would set specific objectives required to "Win The War," rather than simply tie it to % of the map your chess piece controls. Those objectives would be dynamic, with new ones popping up as they're completed. Maybe your country is "ordered" to capture a particular field, then upon completion, the next objective is to bomb a fuel factory into rubble.