My honest first impressions of the game

[gpwurzel]

When I started this, I was lucky in that Bruv from The Few gave me tips and pointers to help me get underway. I've flown many a flight sim (I still cant believe it took me soo long to find this one  )

Welshlad, if you want some help, give Bruv119 a pm, and he'll help you out (and yes, I'm shamelessly advertising the fact we are recruiting.... )

The Few are a mainly euro squad, and fly to have fun, get kills, bomb things and always help the newer members (especially me..lol..)

Hoping to see you up,

Wurzel

[goober69]

I think to some extent he has a valid point.  The first time I logged on I jumped into the MA and couldn't figure out how to start my engine.  I logged out, went to the TA and asked on text.  No one answered and, until I went there to do a little fighting with Widewing a couple of months ago, that was the one and only time I ever set foot in th TA.  I didn't really ever visit the BBs until HT split the arenas and dumped the big maps.

I remember my first few flights in AHI.  I had the key commands and dot commands printed out for reference but there were too many to remember.  I didn't know about auto-pilot and was trimming constantly to maintain striaght and level flight.  It took months before I figured out what the NE and SW things were on the clipboard.  I always took off from the hanger 

I think that a new player, one who has never logged on before, should get some sort of prompt explaining where to find information (web-site, netaces, etc.) and that there should be a "don't show this message again" tic box.

I also think that a key command and dot command quick reference guide should be available in-game.  It's pretty non-intuitive to have to open the clipboard, click preferences, map keys to find it.  How to open it could be the first thing on the new player prompt screen (or in-game pop-up).

A few very basic, simple changes would go a long way and wouldn't take anything away from the game as a sim.

very valid point we should have a disclaimer lol

not saying anything like we need it or anything but i wasted my 2 weeks before i even found the trainers site lol
i did go to the main site and read all the information and i wasn't ever expecting this game to be easy but at least i got to fly for my two weeks free.

after that of course i spent over 8 months in HTH arenas before they were shut down permanantly. i learned enough of the basics there to help me in the ma but i was still a noob.

still am at heart.
'
really though i think that anyone who reads the info and pages about how to set it up shouldnt have much of a problem. im just very glad that i didnt have to start paying for the game until i had gained most of the basic knowledge to fly.

[wrongwayric]

Once again i'll state that they should have a mandatory 30 minutes at least in the Training Arena! You join the game for the free 2 weeks and for the first 30 minutes the only arena available to you is the Training Arena. Not sure how hard this would be for HT to program but it sure seems like it'd be an overall benefit to the new players as well as the guys with time in. Would stop a lot of the repeat questions in the Main Arena areas and get the new players up to speed a little faster. Someone stated it wasn't a "press and fly game" you hit it on the head with that one. 6 years of playing regular and i still learn something new every day in the game.

[wantok]

Sounds good Wantok, who's going to provide it?
Do you have the resources to provide full time around the clock support for new players on a small budget?
I Didn't think so, what makes you think HT has?
How many proficient players do you think there are in this game? How do you think they got that way?
The existing tutorial/help system worked just fine for me and thousands of other players.

Heya SD67.  What I said was "AH needs a better in-game help / tutorial system for first-time players".  I wasn't talking about 24x7 human trainers, or any kind of live training.  What I was thinking of was a few small tutorials built into the game software, specifically for first-time players.  I guess that would be something like canned audio and text instructions superimposed on the actual game while you're selecting a plane, trying to take off for the first time, trying a tank for the first time, etc.

[SD67]

Ahhh well then I think there is already something in the works for that.
There is a new feature on the clipboard that is yet to be enabled regarding training. Between this and the offline practice missions there should be a new and improved version of n00b in the skies in AHII, IF they take advantage of it.