Look at from the view point of TW9 if you may (player Z). Player X found a way to disrupt player Z's preference in game play. Player X called out of course, and did get accomplices, but the end result is the disruption of player Z's ideal.
The catch 22 of your post I originally quoted is that there is currently no game mechanic available for TW9 to disrupt the game play of those who intentionally disrupt his. Let’s pose a hypothetical there are 4 of each on each side. 4 “TW9’s”; and 4 “others”. Caught in the middle unspoken are the players who make enough to show a full bar of radar in the sector on the map in question. That sounds like 20+ players minimum; if I understand the map correctly. Now the “others” think that group of possibly 20 players could be better used attacking / defending a base somewhere else on the map. Those “others” have it in their ability to disrupt the conflict in question with or without help. Possibly they ask for help, possibly they don’t. Either way those 4 (on the same country, acting of their own accord regardless to objection) effected the game play of 4 (minimum) of their country-mates.
What a bunch of nonsense. I can't say it NEVER happens, but cases where people level fields in order to make the furballers go away are maybe one in a hundred, if that. Maybe more like one in a thousand. The other 999 times they're not out to do anything but take the base - even if they don't try to take the base the way you think bases ought to be taken.
I can say that I've never, and I mean never, joined a posted mission and had the person leading it say "Okay, let's go ruin that furball so those guys will have to help take bases." Never. Not rarely,
never. It's always a plan to take a base. Maybe some individuals say that, but not guys running missions.
On the other hand, 100% of people ratting out missions are doing it just to sabotage other players on the same side.
I have many, many times either said or heard someone in the squad say "Let's just leave that alone and attack somewhere else, it's nothing but an endless furball that's been going on there for 2 days."
I have some great 1-1 or 2-2 fights that I stumble into randomly, but much bigger than that the furballs tend to become exactly like what ardy describes. Usually they're not dominated by veteran players, they're dominated by the people who fight in packs of ten or more, never get more than 5k from the rest of their huge horde, and heroically jump, ten at a time, on any lone pilot on the other side who dares to come out of his side's horde. Maybe that's not a problem for the 1% of veterans with the skill to beat those odds, but it is for average players. Not clueless idiots, average players, the ones who've been playing more than six months and less than five years, the ones who make up the majority of the player base.
It forces average players into timid play, not because they have no chance of getting kills against other average players, but because they have no chance of getting kills or even learning anything if they take one step out of the cover of their own horde and get devoured by the piranhas. If they want to do anything but get massacred, they have to either (a) fly timidly like everyone else and compete with 10 other guys for each kill, (b) leave the "furball" and hope to find a 1-1 somewhere else on the map, or (c) have something happen that motivates all the players in both hordes to quit flying like milksops and actually get in there and
fight.
That's why without exception, and by a long shot, the best
large fights I've had have been base take attempts, either defending or attacking.
So yes, the furballers do need the base takers, because when a base is threatened it forces both the attackers and the defenders to roll up their sleeves and actually get in close with the enemy and
fight if they want to keep the base, as opposed to dawdling around in your horde waiting for some poor schmuck on the other side to leave his horde. Sure, the veteran players don't need that motivation, but they're as small a portion of furballers as they are of war winners, and the other 49 people in the "furball" do need something to motivate them to actually fight. It's not making anyone help take bases, it's improving the intensity of the fight.
I suspect that's why the numbers in the WW1 arenas dropped to almost nothing once the novelty wore off. It's why I never go in there. I like the planes, but with no larger goal to focus on the action is mind-numbingly boring.
And on the other hand, if someone gets a horde mission up to go level and capture a base with no opposition, what do you furballers care? It's not affecting you at all, because if it's without opposition, it can't be anywhere near your big furball. Aren't they doing exactly what you
want them to do, leaving your precious furball alone? So why is it necessary to blow their mission, unless you just want to be obnoxious? You've just gotten to the point where you can rationalize any degree of rude and obnoxious behavior by telling yourself that those guys don't deserve any consideration because they aren't playing the game right like you are.
