In the not too distant past, the Scenario was MOSTLY the practice times, the team building, the planning, the build up, the testing of the mission plans during the 3 hours of the frame, then spending the next week gearing up for the upcoming frame.
The Scenario was NEVER about cramming as many fights in as you could
Sorry to hear you are stepping down, Roc.
I have a similar mindset, and I can honestly say the best days of this game have come and gone. Not because of graphics or gameplay or much of what HTC can control, but because the community has changed so much and not for the better. Aces High has literally hemorrhaged subscribers and the biggest loss is the increasing number of talented people that volunteer their time to make events so popular in this game.
The Scenario was flying for an hour or so horsing around with your friends, scouting, trying to pit strategy against strategy, flying, scouting, searching, stumbling upon a group and engaging, reacting to the reality of the situation without having it scripted.
Philippine Phandango is a good example of the heavily scripted events that ruined it for me. We no longer had to second guess our decisions but instead we were able to discern which enemy squadrons would be present in which locations and even individual pilots. Even in a fight we could figure out who was flying which plane in an enemy formation and target certain pilots first that posed a greater threat.
It's time for new players to create the events they want to play, not create the events I miss and wish people would play.
Take a break and rejoin the ranks of the CMs, I miss those events too.
edit: It took me some time to type this, I didn't want to offend anyone nor did want to demean the individual efforts of volunteers.