Gonna Miss Fester

[Toad]

Mako, you may disagree of course, but I think most of those "Air Quake" types, like myself, feel that there is ONE big map... ONE.. that currently provides good action.

You don't see too much praise of Big Isles or AKDesert by those of us that are ecstatic about FesterMA. A bit for Trinity, but that praise mostly focuses on the improvement brought about by NB's adding more CV's and changing V fields to A fields.

I don't have disdain for the makers of those other maps. They built what they thought would be a good map. I salute them for the effort. Yet, as Fester points out, every map has lessons for those that would build the next map. Fester did a fine job of making an action map for good fights. Even the GV guys sing its praises.

It should be noted that all the "missions" and flying styles that are/were available to YOU on other MA maps are still present on Festers map.

So where's your beef? You can still fly your way.

Is the problem what Laz so often points out? Are you unhappy that Fester's map doesn't channel other players into gameplay into the areas YOU particularly favor?

Well, amigo.. there's a large group of folks that feel that way about Big Isles especially, AKD and to a lesser extent Trinity.

What goes round, comes round. At long last.

I personally detest Big Isles, dislike AKD and tolerate Trinity (the CV fites are decent while they last). So I'll rejoice when FesterMA is up and go to the CT or DA or work on the honey-dew list when I can't find something interesting to do in the MA when the "poor" maps are up. When Fester's up, I plan to maximize my play time.

Looks like you and those who think like you do will get a turn to experience this feeling now for at least one week of whatever the rotation turns out to be. My condolences.

[beet1e]

Well said, Blue Mako. My thoughts entirely. LOVED the washing machine comment.

Originally posted by Toad
So where's your beef? You can still fly your way.

Is the problem what Laz so often points out? Are you unhappy that Fester's map doesn't channel other players into gameplay into the areas YOU particularly favor?

ALL of that applies to the FURBALLER whines on the Pizza and other large maps.

So where's your beef with the larger maps? You can still fly your way - on pizza and other large maps. Are you unhappy that the large maps don't channel other players into gameplay into the areas YOU particularly favour?

Bottom line - each of us has a different interpretation of what is "fun" and each of us finds his fun on different maps. Personally, I would rather have a 20 minute sortie in which I got 3 well earned kills (with no interlopers) than a 10 minute sortie in which I got 10 vulches. And Fester's map is all about 10 kill vulch sorties. I don't think I'm alone in noticing that the folks praising FesterMA do so in terms of "number of kills" and/or kills per hour - but those are stats which arise primarily from vulching. If that's your fun, then enjoy when you can.

[artik]

The big problem of FestersMA - there are a lot of furballs - yes it is funny to get 2-3 kills in one fight and then..... die.
The problem that there are players that fly-to-get-kills-and-survive. An all this big furballs not always let you do this.

Most of players in MA not so interested in landing - they prefere to get kills - fun - furball  and then take other plane.

But if you want to make kills and stay alive.... Only really good pilots can do this. If I see furball I not enter it unless I have good energy advantage. When after few passes I loose some energy I disangage to grab alt and come back. It takes more time to get kills but you stay alive. At FastersMA the style was only furballs for low level fighters like Spit 5. You can do some energy fight but.... It wasn't really something good.

[beet1e]

Originally posted by lazs2
 This guys post proves what we all knew all along... the large maps with far fields are for the unskilled

I guess the REAL pilots of WW2 were all just unskilled dweebs then. They had to fly considerably more than 2 minutes to get to the "action". BTW, WW2 was a war that occurred during the last century. It is rumoured that events in that war led to the creation of this game...

...Oh wait, this *game* doesn't have anything to do with WW2 any more, as Blue Mako reminded us.

Never mind.

Quotes from my earlier thread, worth repeating.

I admit I vulch, and I do it well.

lots of good vulches!

Good flights, plus good vulching

it just seems to be mass vulch and roll to the next base sessions.

Mob mentality is taken to the nth degree on this map.

Supreme excellence consists of a good vulch.

He's right, it is a huge vulch fest but I had fun doing so. Im afraid it may wear off soon if you play enough.

Gotta say though the Quake style furballing thing gets old pretty quickly for me and this map seem to encourage it even more than the others

[Shane]

Originally posted by artik
But if you want to make kills and stay alive.... Only really good pilots can do this.

big honking !!

[Toad]

No, Beet1e; you simply don't know what you're talking about. That has, however, been pointed out to you many times before.

The furballers cannot fly "their" way on the large maps due to the change HT made to fuel replenishment. When fuel is knocked to 25% on Big Isles (especially Big Isles), AKD and to a lesser extent (since NB wisely added CV's and changed some V's to A's) it pretty much eliminates the "fun" planes for furballing. There's simply not enough fuel to travel to a fight, fight and then return.

And none of us are going to fly 10+ goon sorties to bring it to 50%. We'll leave that to you "war winners".  Personally, I either go to the CT (same as I do when "night" falls), go to the DA or just shut off the computer. It's not worth the hassle.

Point two is that furballing doesn't impact the "war winners" game at all. You could have 200 players furballing at some point on the map and the other 300 could still do serious strateegery and win wars and have big important resets and stuff.

The converse is not true. Once the fuel is down, furballing is extremely difficult on the big maps and not worth the inordinate time it takes to replenish. Face it, the difficulty in porking fuel is minimal compared to the difficulty in replenishment. It's way out of balance.

So now at last we have a good fighting map. Too bad you don't like it. May I suggest the CT or the DA?

As far as your interpretation of fun, you are much more likely to find that situation in the CT. I'm amazed you aren't a CT regular already. Perhaps this will force you to discover that what you desire already exists in another AH arena.

Oh.. for those of you that think you can't land kills on Fester's map... it once again just shows you don't know what you're talking about.

It's far EASIER to land kills on Fester's map than any of the other Big Maps. I'm getting far fewer vultches as well because folks will actually come out of the ack to fight midway between fields.

Landing 4-5 kills is far more routine for me on FesterMA. Please excuse me for copying Beet1e's posting style, but I recently landed had a 4-kill. Came out a 5k, had a SpitIX dive on me from the 12, killed him in the second turn. Had an La-7 dive on me as the Spit fight ended, dove down spiraling and reversing. Foolishly he stayed in the fight down at ground level, killed him on the second turn. Took hits from a N1K as this fight ended, with him boiling up my 6; reversed him and killed him as a second N1k screamed in from the right side. This one took about 4 turns before he goofed going into the vertical. I slunk home in the weeds with low ammo.

This type of think is much more common for me now. It's far, far tougher to get home from fights in early war planes on the other Big Maps.

I landed way more kills on Fester than I do on any other Big Map we have.

But hey... stay up there in the stratosphere and win the war... nothings stopping you.

[lazs2]

beetle... most of the so called furballers get more kills between deaths than your so called "survivors"... The survivors are really just hiding thier lack of skill by flying the plane with the biggest advantage in an untouchable way... they have mistaken patience for skill.

the difference between a furball friendly map and one that is not is that the furball friendly map doesn't force any type of gameplay.... it allows all types.   the other end of that is that the big maps that aren't furball friendly force gameplay... they make furballs impossible...  

If people aren't flying the way you like on festabria it is because they had a choice and they rejected your style... It means they never enjoyed it.

And.... I am not here to pretend to re-enact WWII... I do not want to fly for maybe a year without every firing at another plane.  I do not want to fly for hours a sortie and have nothing but a sore butt to show for it.   I don't want to be too cold or too hot.

lazs

[sax]

Speaking from experiance Mako , without the furballers you could , in theory fly for hours and never get a kill:)

When that was all I was able to do my best meat was screaming thru the pile-up.

Festers map is a veritable smorg for B&Z. Bombers are probably safer now cause no one is up there. GV's have more than enuf action.
Furballers are happy , hell they are even defending bases now. They can easily up from a rear base and fly over to defend.

The only player I see not liking this is the fuel porker cause his efforts just don't mean as much:)

[Baine]

A great map, great fun and guess what? When I wanted to fly high and make it home alive I started from a rear base, got some alt, did my thing and then beat feet. Managed to do some hi-alt bombing and some low alt furballing. Got a chance for some rockin' tank battles and several base captures. To me, at least, it seemed the best of all worlds. I personally can't see the harm in that.

[beet1e]

Mr. Toad,

I have people who are in complete agreement with me, and there are people who want exactly what I want out of this *game*. So you're either wrong, or there are a lot of people who don't know what they're talking about, or maybe you don't know what you're talking about. You see the spacing of the fields does not "cause" fuel porkage. In fact fuel porkage is more likely where the fields are not far apart because SFP can auger in and be back on station with another load of ord within about 3 minutes. With further to fly, our friend with attention deficit disorder will soon get bored with that. As a matter of fact, a week ago on FMA (the only chance I had to sit down and play for a few hours) all the Rook front line bases had had their fuel porked - that's why I logged off. I very rarely saw fuel porkage on the pizza map, or if a field was porked, there was another field with fuel @ 125% equidistant from the target area.

Yes I do like the CT from time to time, but the numbers are low in Euro hours.

Lazs, I know what you're saying about guys flying the plane with the biggest advantage etc. I call that flying the easymode planes, and people do that because they don't have to spend a lot of time learning ACM (attention deficit disorder coming into play again) and the P51/la7/spit subset is... well, easy. That's why I never fly 'em. Seal clubbing is not my bag. Even the G10 has a bit of an uberity tag, and that's why I've been trying the G6/G2/F4 etc. instead.

I don't agree that furballs are impossible on the big maps. I have films and screen shots which show furballs taking place. Maybe we don't agree on what a furball actually is: Can you give me a dictionary definition? Or maybe film one of your sorties and post the film here? That would help clear it up.

[Toad]

All the people in complete agreement with you can still do all the things they love to do on Fester. What bugs the living doo-dah out of you and those agree-ers is that now not everyone has to play with them. Just like Laz points out.

You're totally lost on the fuel porking. What FesterMA means is that fuel porking, easy or hard, doesn't matter to the furballer now, as Sax points out. Pork with gay abandon, as you like to say. It no longer matters for those seeking just the quick fight... because the fights the thing and "winning the war" isn't. Now, we've got one map that ALWAYS lets us find a quick fight. Thank Cod, at long last.  



But, hey.... good news for your and yours too! You can still bomb those fuel toolsheds all you like. We'll have enough gas to take our C-205 or F4F to the fight and back with a few kills on board. We don't have enough gas to conquer the world and win the war... but then we never wanted to do that anyway.

Perfect solution.


Enjoy!

[beet1e]

Mr. Toad - thank you for your prompt response- always good to hear from you, whether or not you know what you're talking about.

I see what you're saying about fuel porkage having a reduced effect nowadays; Perhaps the SFP hadn't realised that as early as Monday of last week when I found all my front line bases fuel porked.

I think we need to wait till everyone has put in more time on this map before we can discuss it further.

But based on what I have seen to date, Blue Mako was right on the money with his game play assessment.

[muckmaw]

Well, moving the fields closer together certainly seems to have placated the furballers and provided a good time for most.

There is plenty of fun to be had on this map. I should also note, I've not seen a problem with fuel porking...well...no more than usual anyway.

The one thing I WAS hoping to see, but have not yet, is a furball with some early or Midwar planes. This part of the Lazs prophecy simply has not come to pass.

I think everyone can agree the furballs are dominated as always by the same aircraft, regardless of the map.

Still, Lazs and company have been proven correct to date on field placement.

The only flaw I can really find with this map is the lack of a role for level bombers, though I don't fault Fester for that. This is simply a mechanic of the gamplay set up in grapevine.

Utopia would be putting level bombers back in the game, and getting more airplane diversity.

[LoneStarBuckeye]

Originally posted by beet1e
I guess the REAL pilots of WW2 were all just unskilled dweebs then. They had to fly considerably more than 2 minutes to get to the "action". BTW, WW2 was a war that occurred during the last century. It is rumoured that events in that war led to the creation of this game...

...Oh wait, this *game* doesn't have anything to do with WW2 any more, as Blue Mako reminded us.

Never mind.

In my opinion, the problem with "REAL" WW2 air combat is that, well, it just isn't any fun.  I don't want to fly around for half an hour in faiiled hope of seeing an enemy plane.  Instead, I want to know that if I fly for five minutes in a particular direction, there will be plenty of red icons for me to target.  Admittedly, it is easier to get irrecoverably sucked into massive furballs when one misjudges the ebb and flow of the fight (e.g., getting low and slow with 7 SpitNikLaLas on my high six), but avoiding that danger is part of the fun and challenge.  I like to furball AND land my kills.

After playing other (supposedly) more "realistic" air combat sims (i.e., IL2), it seems to me that AH was designed with certain (excellent, IMHO) gameplay concessions in order to promote dogfighting (e.g., view system, gun lethality, etc.).  In my opinion, furballing against live humans is just about the best gaming experience there is.  For me, it's not about "realism," it's about the FIGHT and getting better at it.  And as far as I can tell, the only way to get better is to throw yourself into the fray and put your virtual life at risk.  (When I get owned in my Spit V by a P47, I recognize that I lost to someone who is considerably more skilled than me and I try to learn from the experience.  For me, this is part of the fun.)  Throwing myself into a fight beyond the point of no return, getting some kills, and somehow making it home is just about as good as it gets for me on a PC.  But, on occassion, I want a more "realistic," mission-type experience, so I load up IL2 (it looks much better, to boot).  

In sum, I think that it is a mistake to try to force AH to be something that it likely was never intended to be.  (Nonetheless, if you would rather cherry pick or blow stuff up than dogfight, I don't see why you can't successfully do that on the new map.  Folks like me, on the other hand, cannot find fights quickly and consistently on some of the other maps, most notably Big Isles.)

Just my $0.02,

JNOV

[SlapShot]

Originally posted by artik
The big problem of FestersMA - there are a lot of furballs - yes it is funny to get 2-3 kills in one fight and then..... die.
The problem that there are players that fly-to-get-kills-and-survive. An all this big furballs not always let you do this.

Most of players in MA not so interested in landing - they prefere to get kills - fun - furball  and then take other plane.

But if you want to make kills and stay alive.... Only really good pilots can do this. If I see furball I not enter it unless I have good energy advantage. When after few passes I loose some energy I disangage to grab alt and come back. It takes more time to get kills but you stay alive. At FastersMA the style was only furballs for low level fighters like Spit 5. You can do some energy fight but.... It wasn't really something good.

Translation ...

I can't fly with impunity and cherry-pick unmolested. There are so many people participating in the furball, that when I try to cherry-pick and miss, I can't extend horizontally or go vertical without running into some guy that will shoot me down.

Your not playing the type of game that I want, and I want it to stop now !!!

As far as furballers not wanting to "survive" ... you have no clue !!!