Originally posted by brady
If all you want to do is furball in fighters then the no base capture thing might be good for you, however there are many other mission types it opens up, using Jabo's, bombers and GV's all become viable means with which to KILL and have fun with base capture. Base capture provides the imputious to fight, it as a vital component to the MA and to AH as the internet.
Well, I agree with you, Brady. Base capture is a valid objective and does provide something to fight over. But I don't recommend eliminating base capture, just not have it the main focus for the entire arena.
A person, very knowledgable in massive online game play, suggested that an advantage it had over offline games was it allowed the players to define the game, while offline games must include an objective and the means to achieve it. The former provides as much variety as the imagination can conceive, while the latter has a much narrow, static scope that players soon grow weary of. Jonathan "BB" Baron knows his stuff and HiTech is most familiar with this.
There are many alternatives to base capture. Some are:
Killing bases so they are unuseable for a half hour or so will provide pupose but affect game play for only a limited time.
A number of neutral bases, which none of the three countries own, that can only be captured by any country.
A limited number of bases that can be captured, distributed in several areas of the map, so that capture of some bases won't impact game play in other areas.
Allowing base capture as we now have but not awarding a win if a country grabs them all. The arena will reset when the number of bases available decrease to a set level.
Some have used Air Warrior as an example. I hesitate to do so knowing many here do not appreciate it. Certainly it was a different game managed by different people, but there may be some value for us there.
They felt that there must be no win-loss built into their game, rather this should be provided by the players. (They provided the game environment, and the players provided the game.)
They felt the players should gather in groups of like interests to enjoy the type of game play they preferred. Base capture would be one type, but it would not need to negatively impact the entire arena. Many types of game play could co-exist in a single arena to suite the many tastes of the players without isolating them. Players could easily move between these as they wished.
They felt that deprecation of the bases would lead to unhappy customers. Players logging in for a night of enjoyable game play would be disappointed to find most of their bases lost or unuseable.
They tried many variations of arena design, including one similar to AH but without the reward for arena wide porkage. When they did allow base capture of the entire arena, they ran into problems much like we see here. So they backed off and made a number of bases non-capturable. I think nostalgia mostly favors the days of base killing with only neutral bases capturable.
Food for thought...
