So what you're saying in effect is, that 90% of the customer base of Aces High are dweebs who blindly run after the easyest kills in the dweebest plane of the RPS.
To me this kind of attitude has always been a cornerstone in these online simulations (not only Aces high though..)
For me, it's challenging and fun to fight in lesser planes part of the time.. It gives this game a lot more variety than going to main where you're going to be gangbanged by hordes of n1ks and chogs.. Not to mention occasional Tempests etc.
Although IMO Tempests are way easyer to kill than N1K's 1:1.
I'm just wondering.. If nobody would go to the historic arena, how would that split up the customer base? I think there would be a dedicated group of players who prefer those settings and would gladly stay there even with smaller numbers.
And what goes to the main, changing from 250 players to 200 won't hurt it at all.. OTOH, 50 players playing 2 sides at HA is enough.
At least HT could give the idea a friggin chance! If it seems to go bad, they can always cancel it.
What about my idea of combining no icons to double size aircraft on arena? That would compensate for the small field of vision we have + make aircraft identification easyer from longer range + make spotting aircraft against ground about as easy as it was in reality.. There won't be icons to mark the planes, but the planes will look about as big as we experience them in real life.
Anyone else noticed how _small_ a lancaster looks like when you make a pass from it's tail at 50ft distance? That friggin thing should fill up your vision at that distance.
In the end, I think HT is more afraid that HA would prove to be so popular that it would kill MA like it did back at Warbirds. (Referring to the WW2 arena now, which is what we should refer to when creating our own, improved HA.)
One solution for the hardcore HA setting could be that: people joining HA get divided randomly to each side, so that player numbers on both sides will be about equal.
If a player ABSOLUTELY want's to change sides for some reason, he could use a few perk points to do that.. This would eliminate the side-changing after the dweebride of the TOD. If a player belongs to squad, there could be an option for a squad to fly axis or allied permanently. That would eliminate breaking up squads. Better yet, HA should have totally it's own squads because MA squads can consist of both LW and US/GB dedicated pilots.
