I’m a veteran AH player returning to the game after a two year absence. I’ve had about 10 hours in the air since my return (I dare not say “comeback”; see below), and to be honest I’m surprised to notice some actual changes in gameplay since the good old days of 2004-2008. (Genuine old timers are allowed a snicker or two at this point.)
I truly expected to find that nothing substantial would change, that “as it had been, so shall it be.” Since slow changes can go unnoticed, I thought I’d share my thoughts for comment in case those who have been here in the interval might find them interesting.
1. Mea Suckage, Mea Maxima Suckage
I expected to have some rust to knock off, but this is ridiculous. I’m amazed at how much I’ve lost just from not flying!
Now I was never an all around ace, but when I put my mind to it I could get a good KPD (best around 8) or get top 30 rank. Now it seems - I just AM rank!
My ACMs are mentally there, but I have NO sense of the envelope and my timing is atrocious. And don’t even get me started on gunnery – if I aimed the apple, Newton would have seen it miss the ground! So AH is NOT like riding a bike…plenty of hard work ahead, I fear.
But in the meantime, I am fodder.
2. Where are the furballs?
Back in the day, we definitely had hordes, picks, and the full menagerie of lamers. But if you looked for them, you could find some nice places to get into a pulse pounding fight. (At the least, you could find some seals to harvest without stooping to the vulchfest.)
But since I’ve been back, I have genuinely seen nothing but horde attacks on swarmed bases.
Yeah, I know that’s what we always whined about, so on the boards it doesn’t SOUND any different. But in real life – where the lift vector meets the airflow – this fight loving guy had genuine difficulty picking a place to fly. Last night I flipped between both MAs sortie after sortie, and even switched sides…and all I could see were hugely imbalanced DARs. I tried a variety of previously reliable tricks – (baiting radar circles, hovering on the fringes of fights, hunting in likely flight paths) - and got no takers. Every plane I could find was either part of an attacking horde, or was coming in from the next base at 42K to get some hordelings.
And yeah, it DOES seem to be a different game environment
3. Knock, Knock – McFly! Anybody there?
The airwaves are really, really quiet. Even in a combat zone, I’m missing the often lame but endearing chatter that normally seemed part of AH. Calls about targets, incoming enemies, whatever. Somebody say something!
There’s doubtless lots going on in squad vox, but man! it felt lonely. On the other hand, lonely is something we geeks can adapt to….
4. Sides are more even
My last year or so of playing there were persistent country imbalances, with numbers being reliably lower for one country than for others. Nice to see that things were pretty much even for all 3 sides when I was flying.
5. Trainers are harder to find
Not a criticism of the volunteer, dedicated, and effective training corps. I owe them a lot! But as I’ve popped in and out of the TA during a variety of time frames, have to admit that there seems to be a decreased presence overall. Those guys (and the occasional girl - <S> Schatzi, wherever you are!) always amazed me with their long hours serving in faithfulness and dedication in the face of endless squeakerage, just to be able to help the few who really wanted to learn…but my overall impression is that there are fewer of them on the ground than there used to be.
6. Who's been messing with my head?
Not sure when it happened, but I'm noticing differences in how hard it is to maneuver around in the cockpit to check the ole 6. Particularly in the F4U series, it seems no amount of TrackIR squirming can give me as good a picture of what's back there as what I used to have. And no, I'm not talking about 6 awareness - I'm talking about the size of the minimum 6 dead zone, what I can see without changing flight path. I suspect this is a more realistic situation, by the way, so I'm not complaining. Got the feeling before that I was allowed to move my head far enough that my EYES could get to the edge of the canopy, even if in real life the top of my head would have to poke past the glass to get those peepers where they were.
Anyway, glad to be back, and plan on logging the work time needed to polish things up.
