The Good Ol' Days, or Rose-colored Glasses?

[Saxman]

Seeing all the threads and disparaging remarks about the state of the game today got me thinking: was there REALLY such a thing as "The Good Ol' Days?"

I'll admit I haven't been around Aces High II as long as some, and I missed AH1. To be honest, I haven't noticed much of a difference between today and when I started. N1K2s, Typhoons and C-Hogs still go right for the HO. Ponies sit at 20k and dive to the deck the instant they get a whiff of a co-alt conn. Vulching, ganging, hordeing. None of that's changed in the 3-4 years I've been here.

I WAS, however, around for Air Warrior for Windows. And y'know what? Except for the lack of HOs due to the game mechanics (the hit bubble didn't register them) everything that's happening in today's game was happening then. Vulching, ganging, hordeing, picking, alt-monkey 51s diving to the deck rather than fight an even fight, etc.

The game hasn't changed.

[Bucky73]

Disagree

[1pLUs44]

agree.

[moot]

The game isn't precise enough a way to put it. 3-4 years isn't enough to appreciate what the "old" guys refer to.  The game itself hasn't really changed. We still have the same general gameplay mechanics: roll a plane and go shoot the red guys and/or their infrastructure.  But mostly the red guys.
The player population has definitely changed, though. That's a major effect on what you effectively get for gameplay in the main arenas.  Scenarios are better than ever.  CT unfortunately never made it, H2H disappeared, which constricts the wide variety of player interests (from hardcore historical to hardcore arcade dogfighting) into just the MAs and DA.  Which is for the worse.  Official H2H will probably lighten a good deal of the dweeb pressure in most arenas, for those that want non-stop free FFA/team dogfighting.

[Lusche]

May depend on the spend of tiem you are looking back. I can't really comment on how it was 10 years ago, i only did one short "2week" stint back in 2000.

I joined AH almost 4 years ago, 2005. In my opinion, there had been some subtle changes but no major one. Back in that days, immedeately told by "vets" how much this game has declined and is now really going downhill. I still read about that, but now by players that did join this game 2 years after me 

When I joined, there was that giant bish horde and everybody complained  on the BBS about seeing only Spit 16 and La 7. Soon there after the LCA was started in rookland and started to flatten bases in mega-horde missions. That was 4 years ago.

And in many complains I don't even see rose-colored glasses but either amnesia or (quite likely) hypocrisy.
I could name (but of course won't do ) a good number of players that joined roughly around the same time. We camped spawns together and congratulated each other about gettin 50+ kills in a Tiger that way. Every combat was exciting, and every kill was fantastic, no matter if he came by vulch, HO or whatever. And today? Now that those player have "seen the light", I do see them complain about how the game has degraded, how nobody fights anymore, how lame spawncampers are.
Some of them seem to have quit the game, because it got boring for them. But they don't relized they had simply outgrown the game, they didn't realize their own gamplay and expectations on this game had changed. They didn't realize that what once seemed to be an exciting fight to them now looks like a weak series of HO's. So they say: Everything has changed.

[Anaxogoras]

This echoes a post I made not that long ago.

In my opinion, players change more than anything else... though I'm sympathetic to the position that ACM knowledge is worse on average than it was many years ago.

[Ratpack1]

[humble]

Huge difference between 99-2000 and now...

[FALCONWING]

May depend on the spend of tiem you are looking back. I can't really comment on how it was 10 years ago, i only did one short "2week" stint back in 2000.

I joined AH almost 4 years ago, 2005. In my opinion, there had been some subtle changes but no major one. Back in that days, immedeately told by "vets" how much this game has declined and is now really going downhill. I still read about that, but now by players that did join this game 2 years after me 

When I joined, there was that giant bish horde and everybody complained  on the BBS about seeing only Spit 16 and La 7. Soon there after the LCA was started in rookland and started to flatten bases in mega-horde missions. That was 4 years ago.

And in many complains I don't even see rose-colored glasses but either amnesia or (quite likely) hypocrisy.
I could name (but of course won't do ) a good number of players that joined roughly around the same time. We camped spawns together and congratulated each other about gettin 50+ kills in a Tiger that way. Every combat was exciting, and every kill was fantastic, no matter if he came by vulch, HO or whatever. And today? Now that those player have "seen the light", I do see them complain about how the game has degraded, how nobody fights anymore, how lame spawncampers are.
Some of them seem to have quit the game, because it got boring for them. But they don't relized they had simply outgrown the game, they didn't realize their own gamplay and expectations on this game had changed. They didn't realize that what once seemed to be an exciting fight to them now looks like a weak series of HO's. So they say: Everything has changed.

Well said

[Banshee7]

You tease...I thought we were gonna have a John Conlee thread 

[Sincraft]

Honestly I tried Aces High I and thought it was a public domain game.  (common phrase back then).

Pretty stale compared to what else was out there.  At the time, I was more into RTS's.

They just don't make games and movies anymore, just garbage.

Aces High 2 was kinda vanilla when I first logged in, but after years of ww2online I never looked back (well not much).

I finally found a game that was exciting and seemingly 'proper'.  

It was warned that after the initial YAY wore of I would be complaining about many things, I thought NAW.  Well I guess they were right!

It's STILL one of the best games out there.  Just have to take your first impressions of graphics away and enjoy the game for what it is.  A pseudo-ww2 figher sim that is LOADS of fun or LOADS of frustration lol.

 

[Chalenge]

I think there used to be a higher ratio of purists/gamers then there is now and thats what everyone is referring to. For the record I am a purist and just cannot bring myself to be anything else.

[bmwgs]

Huge difference between 99-2000 and now...

8 - 9 years.  Many things have changed in that time.  My kids turned into adults.  I am driving different vehicles.  I will be retiring this year.  The economy went to crap.  I have had 4 different computers.  I still have the same wife and house though. 

The list goes on and on and on.  So why is it so unexpected that the game has changed?  Does anyone really expect that it would remain the same year after year?  Maybe the changes are good, maybe they are bad, I guess that is in ones perspective, but there is no doubt that there always will be change with time.

 

Fred is voicing his opinion again.

[Urchin]

Seeing all the threads and disparaging remarks about the state of the game today got me thinking: was there REALLY such a thing as "The Good Ol' Days?"

I'll admit I haven't been around Aces High II as long as some, and I missed AH1. To be honest, I haven't noticed much of a difference between today and when I started. N1K2s, Typhoons and C-Hogs still go right for the HO. Ponies sit at 20k and dive to the deck the instant they get a whiff of a co-alt conn. Vulching, ganging, hordeing. None of that's changed in the 3-4 years I've been here.

I WAS, however, around for Air Warrior for Windows. And y'know what? Except for the lack of HOs due to the game mechanics (the hit bubble didn't register them) everything that's happening in today's game was happening then. Vulching, ganging, hordeing, picking, alt-monkey 51s diving to the deck rather than fight an even fight, etc.

The game hasn't changed.

I joined back in the March-April time-frame of 2001.  I don't doubt that I have changed as a person - when I started playing I was 23 with a huge chip on my shoulder and a bad anger problem.  Now I'm 31, married with a kid on the way, great job, but more important I'm happy. 

That said, the game has changed, and it isn't for the better.  When I started playing, the focus of the game was on air combat.  Sometime around the 2003-2004 time-frame the focus of the game moved from air combat to resetting the map - and it hasn't looked back.  When I started playing, you could find two fields that were a sector or so apart and if you took off and flew to the enemy field at some point you would be met by an enemy.  Again, that changed several years back - one of the most disgusting memories I have of this game is me flying to an enemy field looking for a fight, orbiting for a while with nothing, de-acking the field and LANDING ON IT, and sitting in front of the tower for 5 minutes.  Nobody ever rolled. 

That is more typical of game-play today. 

I remember a quote from Hitech saying the base capture / map reset mechanism was an enabler for air combat.  That is no longer the case.  The base taking is no longer a means to an end, it is the end.

Vulching, ganging, picking?  Yes, those all happened.  Hell, I don't doubt that there were even some conga lines 'back in the day'.  But even though I would say that air combat "purists" were always a minority in the game, that point of view is pretty much extinct in AH today.

[BaldEagl]

Urchin pretty much nailed it.  Back in the day you could fly toward an enemy field and someone would up to fight you.  Now if there's already someone up at that field they land and go elsewhere so they don't have to fight you or they call in their squaddies/countrymen so they can have a defensive hoard.