Originally posted by Midnight
Still to this day, I wonder why the "furballers" don't use the DA more often. There is a 100% endless fight oppurtunity there at the "Furball bowl" where everyone could yank and bank to their heart's content with no one ever able to ruin the fight by killing thier field or strating the fuel.
Why then, does this not get utilized?
I like a good multi-plane dogfight as much as most other pilots, I just would like to have some other changing objectives to why the fight is happening, a reason why a huge battle is raging on a certain part of the map. When it's the same nonsense every day, my interest starts fading.
The word furball is often misused. A furball is a large group of fighters seeking only to kill other fighters. There does not have to be a reason for it other than the fight itself. This can certainly take place in the training or dueling arena. But being seperated from the MA has always limited the number of players there. Perhaps one reason this is so is that players can soon grow weary of this mindless slaughter,
But there is another type of game play the focuses on fighter combat, such as you refer to at the end of your message. This type of game play can and often involves a furball, but with an objective. And strat also plays a role. This objective can be the same as the arena capture objective, just on a smaller scale. A fight can go on all night over the destruction or capture of just one or a few bases. This is the main type of game play that fighter jocks talk about, and this cannot be relegated to a seperate arena.
All complaints about game play (vulching, B&Z, T&B, bombing, strat, land grab, milk running, gang banging, base porking, suicide jabo, etc.) have been constantly argued about for going on twenty years now, with no resolution in sight. And each are valid if the customer enjoys it.
What I would like to focus on is not which game style is better, but how each might be played with the least disruption on the others. The situation at hand places one type of game play above all others, at the expense of the others. Certainly, we will never end the whining and taunting (nor should we because it's fun), but we should be able to make some improvements in balance.
I have one more comment, mostly in response to NoBaddy. Yes, the Main Arena is there for open game play and chaos is expected. There are other venues for realistic play. But the MA arena is also there for practice and honing of skills. This means we should promote fighting, ACM, strat and team work. Unfortunately, the present situation promotes conflict avoidal and massive land grab by the most effective means available (which isn't fighting). It deprives players of their learning opportunities and does nothing to stimulate their taste for the more realistic opportunities.
