To be fair, nobody really asked for the radar changes did they? I mean that wasn't some big thing that everyone was dying to have changed that I'm aware of. I've never once heard anybody complain about the way it was in the game.
I do like the changes. I think it's better. But some people hate any kind of change.
You’re right. Not many (recently) asked for a change. The change happened years ago. One day the MA had only radar within the radar rings. The next day we had every GV and airplane as its own individual radar tower with little to no delay and kill messages added for every death. This change wasn’t asked for. It just showed up. Presumably to make the MA appear more active and help people find the action.
It basically worked.
Too well. Initially the response was mixed with most of the complaints about individual players being hunted because their name was being broadcast whenever they scored or died. The name in lights thing was a symptom of the the real problem in my opinion. Which is/was the ability of localized groups to either flat out gang/hunt individual players while outright avoiding danger unless all the conditions were 100% favorable. It fed things like the C-47 becoming virtually useless. Bombers being singled out before they could even get close to targets unless they had copious amounts of altitude. Flanking large groups was nearly impossible. Plane selection pushed to faster and faster aircraft just to be competitive (both bombers and fighters). Altitude became much more important. Radar rings being less strategic. Pilots taking off from a quiet field were being broadcast on radar by an enemy GVs sleeping under trees. Lone pilots being converged on before they could even close to gun range on the lone enemy they see. Entire groups hovering on opposite sides of imaginary battle lines to avoid being the first one into a fight. All of that is still happening. Just slower.
There was pushback. Swaths if people complained. Many quit citing the radar settings as the final straw.
Some of us dealt with it (me) but refused to let it go. I’ve railed against proximity radar for years. To the point that I’m a basically joke because of it. Partly because it sucked much of the fun out of the game for me but mostly because I believe it was bad for business. I recognized that pilots like me are much more rare than we used to be. We were being run off and ignored providing fewer targets for the hordes and career pickers. We are type who didn’t care if we won the war. We generally didn’t care if we won or lost a good fight. As long as that fight could be had without radar pointing us out for the 2-6 other folks who never would’ve been a part of it if they weren’t spoon fed our position on the clipboard. Am I going to be picked with a 20 second delay? Yes. Am I going to be ganged? Yes. But I’m also going to have more fun providing a target for you which results in me being there for you to shoot down at a much higher frequency. Provided, of course, that you look out the cockpit every few seconds to actually see me.
So…yeah. Changes and compromises were asked for, but most of those asking gave up years ago or simply quit. But it’s been years in the past.
I personally can’t thank HT enough for the change. I was skeptical that the delay would do much of anything. The last couple weeks have been infinitely better. The fights are lasting longer without one side getting beat down. The first couple days there was a bunch of people who were clearly staring at the clipboard and getting surprised. That’s tapering off as they learn. I believe we can refine the radar without simply reverting to the uneven standard we had before the delay. Until then, keep it as it stands.
