Originally posted by TheBug
I see AH events bending themselves to "fit the crowd". Maybe for the good of the many that is the way to go, but I'm not gonna deny it saddens me and think back to the "hardcore" 
days of Warbirds.
I think it's the opposite. What you see is AH events *not* bending themselves to "fit the crowd." If they bent themselves to fit the crowd, there would be no GV's because the crowd doesn't like to drive GV's. Also, with GV's it is more realistic, not less realistic. I think it is more accurate to say that, if you want more realism, you thus want GV's in at least some scenarios -- you just don't want to be one to drive any of them.
That's fine, but let's not kid ourselves: really almost no one wants to drive vechicles in preference to flying aircraft. If you have a scenario signup were the only people in GV's are those who checked the box "if needed, I'll drive GV's", very few people will check that box, even if they truly wouldn't mind doing so if needed. The reason is they know that anyone who checks that box will be driving GV's and that everyone who checks the box "I'll quit if I have to drive GV's" will get all the plane slots. Most people's attitude toward that set of choices will be "screw that -- I'm not going to lump it so that someone who won't ever lump it gets to fly a plane instead of me."
To me, the solution appears to be the following, as was stated above: (1) since you can't please all of the people all of the time, have a variety of scenarios (some with GV's, some without, some with lots of bombers, some with few bombers, some with no alt limits and high altitudes, some with low altitudes, some with Zeros, some without, etc.); and (2) when you do have rides you *know* very close to no one is going to prefer (basically GV's, LVT's, PT boats, C-47's, and gunner duty), entice people with some sort of tradeoff (one box with "I'll fly Zeros and no ground vehicles" or "I'll fly Betties and no ground vechicles" or "I'll fly Ki-84's and some ground vechicles", etc.) and make sure there is a mechanism -- in the rules -- that forces rotation through the undesirable rides (so that there is no competitive disadvantage to providing rotation).
Stalin's Fourth satisfied #1. It gave us another realm of variety and things we haven't seen before in scenarios. I loved it. I loved driving the GV's. (I even like WWIIOL, and that is much more tedious in so many ways than GV driving in a scenario.) Stalins Fourth tried to satisfy #2 but only partially accomplished that, at least on the allied side. We tried having plans for groups to do half a frame in GV's and half flying, but you just can't all that effectively switch in a frame. We tried having some dedicated to GV's and some to flying, then switching next frame, but we needed enough GV's that some still ended up doing more than 50% in GV's. We could have put less people in GV's, but there was a competitive advantage to make sure we had a substantial number of GV's, so that's naturally what we did.
The other thing we already knew but had reinfoced is that you can't rely on player enforcement of rules beyond anything but the simplest thing (like you get one life). The spawn rules were not hugely complicated, but they were complicated enough that you're 100% certain to get violation of them in a scenario of 100+ people. Add to that the fact that you don't know about the violation until after the frame is over (so you can't during the frame "retake" a base that you took with some violation that later would otherwise negate the capture), and you've got a recipe for huge amounts of trouble and arguing.
Stalin's Fourth is a great and impressive scenario -- jawdroppingly impressive in so many ways. I hope we run it again -- with a couple of small tweaks, with GV's still included, and in a mix of many other scenarios of all sorts of different types.
