Here is the deal. We are all here because we like to fly highly realistic WWII planes in a combat environment. The more realism where the hardware is concerned, the better - no argument.
I want to ask and bring to your and HTC attention the different issue - the game environment. I could think of two methods to implement it, three rather but I am disgusted with the first one, so it is just there for comparison.
1. Quakebirds - pretty much what we have now. People jump in, grab whatever plane they can and shoot each other. No built-in incentive to adhere to any standards, no historical immersion or story whatsoever. Whatever structure and organisation exists is totally thanks to the players themselves. No realistic goals a player could set and implement alone or with a few wingmen. Very few goals that can be implemented even with a high degree of cooperaton - protect a field, capture a field, bomb something...
2. On-line EAW. Faithfull reproduction of the real war. Apparent goal of HTC, WB and WW2OL. Reasonable plane selection for different sides, reasonable objectives and balance. Extremely hard to reproduce outside small scenario events.
Cooperation, coordination and commitment required from many people to bring such an event to life.
Those of you who ever participated in real wars or even studied them, know that despite huge organisation and planning they were total diddly-ups. Nothing ever went as planned. And they had professional and dedicated participants who could not log out on a whim and where shot for not following orders. And it was not entertaining in the least - mostly waiting and waiting, marching and more waiting, long boring missions or patrols, then bang - and you are dead not even realising what happened, most likely a friendly fire diddly-up. How would someone expect to reproduce it in a game where there is no player discipline whatsoever? Beats me. At least HTC is going for simplistic model, unlike WW2OL.
3. Fantasy settings. Strike Commander or Crimson Skies, Privateer or even X-Com Apocalypse.
That would allow to have structure, reasonable missions involving reasonable numbers of participants, pretty much free schedule.
Instead of 3 countries imagine a couple of dozen of large goverments/syndicates and a bunch of smaller ones.
Players a mercenaries - eather freelancers or one contract basis. Corporations post a list of missions for individual players or squads - escort a cargo plane or a train from location A to location B, take out the competitor's ship, factory, convoy or oil platform, etc.; perform a reconnaissance mission - high alt or low level; pick up drugs, land and recover items/people, etc.,
free privateering license - bust what you can and collect the bounty.
If you do not have money - the company supplies the plane, fuel and ammo but selection may be limited. If you have money - buy your own plane, insure it and use it for missions if it is suitable. For that matter, buy the whole stable of planes and rent them out...
Matter of death is an issue. Let's say they clone you from the bits and pieces for a reasonable sum...
With this approach somebody can log in for half an hour into an empty arena and still fly a reasonable mission as a part of a long carreer. No more "why is Spit shooting Spit" crap, numbers imbalance, pointless furballs with no real purpose.
There are lots of balancing options available once there is no need to be historically accurate. Rolling planeset can still be used, BTW.
Even some historical flavor can be preserved with a right storyline. Example - in the year 1944 all major countries build the A-bomb and use them on their opponents capitals on the same day. The war is over but the goverments are no more. Countries split apart in anarchy. Generals, corporations and municipalities declare independent states. You can still be a member of a historic national squad flying the same historic hardware. Just do it for hire!
Do not get me wrong, I would much rather like a "Historical" setup. I would like to fly realistic missions more then once a week in a WB scenario, but every time I log in, I just do not believe it is possible to do, even if all three teams (HTC, WB & WW2OL) cooperated rathe then coompeted with each other, so I ask for "Fantasy" arena. If/when the infrastucture and strategy in "Fantasy" arena ever gets complex enough - just convert it to the "Historical" and everybdy is happy.
VOTE:
Do you believe that "Historical" setting can be successfully built and should be or should the "Fantasy" be given a try.
My vote is - "Fantasy"
miko--
