Pretending six vets being radar vectored directly at some poor guy who just figured out how to take off is somehow helpful for the new player is just…wrong.
Where are all these new players? When did they show up? Did they tell campfire stories about how the easy radar made them stay that I missed? I’d venture a guess that most noobs are gone in 30 minutes or less and it has nothing to do with finding a fight (crew chief might help with this). The ones that actually get in the air and are struggling probably don’t even understand how the clipboard warriors zooming in at 400mph are even showing up (radar or not). Chances are they didn’t even see the person who picked them or even know they were there. Heck, I’ve seen new players chasing around green icons and trying to shoot them. You know what really gets the hooks into new players who make it beyond a couple sorties? Getting a kill. They’re going to struggle with the worst of the current pilots in the MA without us having the benefit of AWACS putting a target on them. I’d personally love to be the guy that new player was able to sneak up on while I was sipping my beer or texting if it got them to stay. Truly new players have a million things to learn and radar wouldn’t even be in the top 10 of what I would want to teach them.
I haven’t seen any new players recently (some shades…yes) but you know what I did see on another thread in the last week or so? A player saying they would make an effort to get in the MA because the radar settings have been tweaked. Saw the same thing some time before that in yet a different thread. That particular former player said they would consider a comeback if AWACS was fixed. He said half his squad quit when AWACS was implemented. That isn’t an isolated statement. Similar have been stated for years. As people here seem to point out, almost religiously when it’s convenient for their argument, the people on these boards are an assumed minority. If that is true, how many former players who quit would consider a come back if radar was addressed? Especially since some miss the game enough to check in from time to time. Dad’s own poll of 45ish respondents (more than are typically logged on in the MA at 6pm on a Tuesday) literally contradicts this notion that radar is a minority issue. The argument is that it’s only for those that come to the message boards and should be asked of paying players is disingenuous because a lot of what remains are the players who enjoy the setting that ran players off. What about those players who no longer play simply because of this one setting? They didn’t get a vote or a poll asking them what they thought about it and they’re not here to weigh in on it.
All that aside, I’d honestly rather have 5 former players back than 100 new players coming to test the waters. Because you’d probably have better retention and word of mouth from those 5. What the people who seem to love the AWACS want is not competent players, or challenging play, but easy targets. They keep arguing that this isn’t a sim. Fair I guess. But, for the majority of the games life, there were more players, no AWACS, and a product that was lauded for striking the perfect balance between game and simulation. A lot of that was nuked with a genuine effort to make the MA seem more populated.
