ENY has been a complete pain in my arse ever since it has been implemented and has been a contributing factor in me cancelling my subscription more than twice.
I like to fly with my friends and squad. The Damned FSO squad got folded into the 412th over a decade ago. Back during Covid I would try and make FSO then Fly the MA afterwards with J0ker and Drano. We would Fly P38s sometimes I would fly my big blue bent wing beauty. After about 30 minutes of flyign in the MA after FSO we would get locked out of all the aircraft we wanted to fly. We would change sides if we could. However, shortly After a side swap sides would become unbalanced again and ENY would ruin the fun. After the first side swap you couldn't change countries again for 6 hours well past out bedtimes. At this point we would just log off.
But Wait there's MORE!
Now we have Auto Contry Swap ... Which is great for the friendless looser who has no squad or friends to fly with ... it even gave them perk points. Unfortunately it has 2 fatal flaws .... First you can't side swap as a group and could very well find yourself fighting the very buddy you were winging with 10 minutes earlier and secondly once you depart the auto change poney ride I hope you like the country you are on because the lock still kicks in and you are stuck for 6 hours.
Simplest solution that took the least amount of effort to deal with the issue ..... Turn off the Country Change Lock or reduce to 30 min or 1hour. For a Bonus instead of using ENY to lock out planes just start perking the late war models depending on what the ENY values are.
Nope we got complex side swapping mechanism that doesn't really fix anything and the game is still bleeding paying customers.
I tried to build The Damned Back up in 2019 right before Covid went into full swing. No one really wanted to come back to AH even to this day.
Most of the older players wanted to move on to DCS and IL2.
We have no problem recruiting from the DCS community or Recruiting old AH and AW players to DCS but none of them want to come back to AH. Right now we have about 3 or 4 active Damned and about 2 or 3 inactive (Does not fly as Damned) players in AH and It's practically impossible to recruit in AH with declining numbers.
Doesn't really help us when we have a Masonic approach to recruitment .... 2B1Ask1, but it helps reduce the chanced of getting Jon Ray'ed again.
Their are two legitimate arguments against Instant side swapping.
CV Tomfoolery which has a simple solution .... Lock out CV control for players if they change sides for 1-6 hours. It's better than locking out side changing. Also keep in mind right now nothing stops auto swap players from dorking around with the CV's
Other wise the only major argument against instant side swapping is Greifing and Spying. Nothing stops autoswappers from doing this any way they just have less control over it as they don't get to decide when the change and what country they change to.
Spying itself is a joke. Make a free account or a shade, Sit in the tower, Open up your map and text buffer ... Privately stream the game to youtube, Facebook, Discord,Twitch .... even when a player isn't actively playing they can just set it up for their friends. Get a couple of account or friends to do this and you everything that is going on an all sides and there is absolutely NOTHING any one can do about it!
So Spying has been a mute point ever since live game streaming became a thing.
But at the end of the day Side balancing is broke they game is still bleeding subscribers. If HTC and/or the AH community doesn't come up with a fix the game is going to die a slow agonizing death that even AH baby Jesus can't save!
Pass the popcorn
P.S. Some people have been asking for AH MA to go to a two sides war from three. I'm not sure if that would work but I think it's a good idea to give it a try at least until we have the numbers to go back to a 3 way war in the MA.
Edit: We already have the auto swap and there is no reason to do away with it even if we turn off the Lockouts. It gives us one more side balancing tool and gives un-attached players a chance to pick up some perks plus HT already put in the work to design and deploy it, I would hate to waste it.
There are several good ideas here that should be noted.
If we were to do a word cloud on the most mentioned complaints we would prolly see ENY, Radar, Side balance and Perks at the top, as a pattern.
The 2-Country thing has been brought up for decades, and as some with scorched ears on the subject it all looks good on paper. Human Nature and the path of least resistance and Odds are almost never equated and when it is the subject dies. It works in IL-2 because the game was designed from the embryo to be that way. But as realistic as it sounds, WWII was not really two-sided. There were many fronts of many countries, and a few countries switched sides.
It's usually only brought up by a very small group that simply repeats the subject, it seems to be the least of majority's concerns. Ask yourself, if it were, why is the AvA always empty? Well, because the masses are in the MA. It's not a concern as they have an unused option. I think this is stepping over a dollar to pick up a dime. I think other subjects are more pending. I think if you did that in this game it would work the opposite of the goal.
First of all, there has to be the Will to at least consider some tweaks.
If we stick with ENY, Perks, Side change and Radar.
I think most understand that the current radar helps new players. Icons is one of those too. I think tampering with anything that helps new players is voodoo. However, I highly prefer Dot Dar, but I'm not going through a learning curve either. Don't stack the challenge too high.
Now we're down to ENY, Perks, Side balance. What is the center point that makes these 3 items have negative effects. Prolly human nature and the path of least resistance.
Are they implemented too hard, or not enough?
Which change would have a bigger impact on attracting former/new players, better yet avoid chancing players out?
The current system of side balancing doesn't help gang-bang situations, in fact can exacerbate the problem. It's not doing that math (I don't think). It will send you to a gang-banging country if the victim country's numbers are higher than those of either gang-banging countries. 60 vs 30 is not equal in a gang-bang, only by country. It would have to send the switches to the country of 30 to balance GB situation, it doesn't. SO the algorithm to do this would probably be extensive. It's more likely some of that situation is up to the community to solve. Gaming human nature is an ugly beast. I'm sure there could be a small tweak that works with the other two issues.
3 way side balance may need a tweak. not sure on that one. That's the debate.
Personally, on the remaining subjects, I think the ideas mentioned above deserve a closer consideration.
At least at a glance, IMO, these 3 items need to work in unison.
What's the center point? What's the goal?
A couple references gave me a chuckle.
