Seriously curious about this because I've never really heard a great explanation, but what made AW scenarios great?
Different world, different era, different conditions.
Here you had an online flight simulator that was populated with players you really don't have today. "We" are now old. We grew up on board games, playing outside, dice games like Risk and Dungeons and Dragons. There was more imagination put into those types of games as you didn't have the eye candy that comes with the new generation of games. This changes, dramatically, the feel and immersion of an event.
The graphics were crap, but it was amazing to "see" the enemy instead of imagine the enemy. Role playing games required in depth detail and description to play with any success. We were used to lengthy descriptions, detailed plans and maps. For those who don't know how complex old Non Electronic role playing games were, we plotted maps, took notes, drafted detail upon detail.
Naturally, those components transferred to flight sims like Air Warrior. The scenarios were far more complex and detailed. I remember a very long time ago that we were preparing for a particularly grueling event, might have been Ploesti if memory serves, and we were figuring out how many bombers we needed. We identified each object that was a target and listed how much damage it took. Took each fighter plane up and Flossy sat in it while I sat behind it taking single shots, ping, ping, ping until the bomber blew up. We did this dozens of times to see exactly how much ordinance was needed to take out the bomber. We then calculated results from typical fights that we gleaned from historical logs, we knew average hit percentages. We knew how many shots were fired and how many hit, so we calculated the percentage of fighters that could logically be expected to be take down a bomber stream in live action conditions. We looked at attrition rate, how many fighters succeeded getting through defenses. From this, we derived the number of planes in the air we needed. Then, after the event was balanced, we let the players have at it and it was up to them to succeed or fail, not the rules.
Just so you know, this is also Exactly what Nef and I did on the last 12 hour event that resulted in a dead heat for 12 straight hours and the very last mission at the very last possible moment determined who won. The opposition was literally minutes away from preventing it, a minor stagger in the launch of their defenses changed the outcome. That was one of the best scenarios I have ever seen unfold. No, it wasn't a "standard" template scenario, but it had all of the elements. Detailed design, months of planning and team building, drawn maps, training sessions, and everything that makes an event successful. It was simply fun.
There is nothing wrong with the way Air Warrior did it's events. Nothing wrong with Aces High events. This is just a new era, new tools, new graphics, and new type of game play. I get it, I enjoy it, but the detail into the design is still no less vital than it was then. We don't turn out for practices. We used to practice several times a night. We don't do complex mission plans. We don't get as active on the boards. But this is just how things are for the moment. There is far more going on in the world and far more options for entertainment. Back then, an Air Warrior scenario was a Major Event and was part of a culture, that's what we did. That was our game, our recreation, our entertainment. We simply put far more into it than is done now. That is both good and bad, many of us are in better shape than we were sitting on our butts every single night for 5 hours
Times change. The immersion is what I miss the most. The build up to the event was as much a part of the event as the saturday afternoon battle was, if not more. The training, drilling, practice sessions was where we built teams and got to know the other players and have turned into friendships that span continents. Point and Click simply does not generate that type of immersion. Time marches on, things change, we adapt. We are populating a game with players who don't know what it's like to not have a TV, a computer, a smart phone, games and information 24/7 at your finger tips. The imagination is being eroded away, I don't know what's going to come of it, it's just different.
