First I'm not advocating Hitech step in and force us to change our habits or delay our gratification with limiters on resources or timers limiting what and when we can up from a field.
After a decade we have evolved hoards into the ultimate blunt force win tool because they work. Along with this we hide in them and 25k on top of them because many of us don't want to be killed in the game at any cost. So we want to be with the 12-30 guys on top unabashedly raping the guys below trapped against the ground. Describes a lot of WW2 and the primary tactic that won fights. Or many battles through out history. Numbers and personal survival decided the fate of civilizations. It's obvious personal survival is more powerful than morality or sportsmanship in an anonymous setting.
Today we are at a confluence of numbers, evolution, and balkanization of player self identification across the three sides of our game. In the past when we fielded more players for longer prime times, most of this was a non issue. There was an excess on all sides who didn't join the hoard in their country and created other types of action elsewhere on the maps. We had a diversity in play styles to entertain us for those willing to look. Looking means not willing to create it themselves. But, could find it and be happy with the game.
Today we appear to be top heavy with lookers and not creators of fun, action, combat or a diversity of them. I will suspect many of the first to move on to other games in the past few years were the creators. The creators were players or groups of players who others followed because they had become a name brand for fun and success whatever they were up to. Todays hoards have become telling in the lack of willingness to branch out in smaller numbers and risk personal failure or defeat as the cost of creating fun.
One might say we have been reduced over time to an unimaginative comfort rut with community leadership who values that comfort over risk. Now that we don't have excess numbers to muddy the optics.
Hoards as the only response to anything today is a symptom of players desperately looking for fun, and many with a low risk value. A few days ago at midnight pacific time I went to a field with a yakT to de-ack, alone it appeared when my countrymen failed to show up. The response was a small hoard to kill just me flying in with alt from another field. Granted, since hoards are the primary source of red guys today, also the main source of combat for those who don't have personal risk issues during prime time.
I don't believe Hitech is on the hook to change this. That has consequences often resulting in lost revenue if he try's to force customers to do anything. And at this time we need our community more than ever. And community is the solution to how hoards are used. Opposed to Hitech jacking everyone around and imposing limitations with consequences to our evenings fun while driving away our freinds.
I know that in knight land for the most part we are a cluster flop parade where it comes to organization. I suspect to a degree the balkanization by personality across the three countries accounts for that. So it's quit easy in this game for even low level organizational tendencies to leverage the hoard as a blunt force win tool. Especially with a hoard of willing lookers who have personal risk issues looking to be led to riskless victories.
Tuesday nights my squad POTW has it's squad night. We can get up to 20 pigs online for that every Tuesday night. But, my CO hates being part of a mindless hoard. So POTW goes where our hoard isn't and picks a fight. We load up a few bombs and make it obvious by breaking things we are there to play. Half the time we get a big hoard furball response. The other half the green robot hoard shows up and finishes off the field. So we go somewhere else and pick another fight to avoid our own country's hoard.
Squads can choose to avoid their own country's hoard tendencies and create fun somewhere else. Then move on when the hoard lings show up for a free lunch with no risk. Right now it looks like laziness is the rule, and wining at all costs specifically with the hoard lings as human waves is the easy risk free way to a fun evening. Squads have more influence on how this game is played and won't admit it. And are the reason hoards with all of their game destroying problems exist today. But, then who doesn't want to win especially if you are hiding in a hoard to cover your lazy approach to wining while teaching new players this is what Aces High is about when they go on to form their squads.
At least Hitech in the face of this laziness, can set the radar back to where it was in the NOE hoard days so we all go back to flying under 15k. And flipping maps faster.
