The Melee arena or the MA once had a community that took care of and nurtured itself by showing up every night and playing the game. Squads ran missions to capture feilds which generated activity. The Lone wolf types had no end to targets, and the budding GV game had something to do by supporting base attacks if they could get there fast enough. The rest took part in these mass group activities that didn't require any skill or leveling up. Just showing up and following along was enough. You learned by being there inside of a semi organized group doing an activity. That was the secret to newbie retention, not the Trainers, or some 1v1 dueling arena, or any of the crap nuget throws on the wall. A community that accepted and took you with them to break things because you pushed the join button for a mission.
Over the next 18 months it was up to the newbie where he wanted to develop his skills and interests. And because of those early missions he had friends, mentors, and probably a squad he belonged to.
The three country model works as an open sandbox world with no forced activities, leveling up, or other requirements. What makes it work, is a community, it is not kept alive by lone wolves or first person shooter styles of combat because it has never been that kind of a game. It will support that mentality of game play though as a part of a community but, not as the only mentality of that community. The MA community didn't all leave the game, you will find them in SFO caring for and nurturing a community. Many of the loudest complainers and weirdball idea tossers in these forums want the game changed into some kind of a bastardization of a lone wolf utopia ala two sided death match WW2oish failure. And to add insult to that injury, forced compliance with garbage rules and having to purchase your skills above paying your subscription fee every month.
And while they are not getting what they want, they come in here and chew on each other, the forum community, and blame Hitech for everything else while pronouncing doom on his game.
The closest thing to community we still have in the Melee arena are the remaining large squads who generate activity when they are in the arena playing the game. Other than that, most players are waiting around for someone else to start something so they can take advantage of it. We seem to have an aversion to missions anymore which is how you introduce newbies to the game. So they stop getting their whatsis handed to them every time they can manage to get off the runway. You really want to help newbies, put up missions and take them along. The TA will not give them the AH bug, they are not yet ready for the DA, combat in the company of friendlies will.
If your retort is missions and land grab killed the game and things have to change because Hitech is an old out of touch whatsit. Maybe this is no longer your kind of game, that shelf life of an AH gamer Hitech spoke of once. I never saw any of the loudest complainers years back leading missions. They used that energy to call players like FBDred a dweeb for constantly leading those missions which they happily poached for kills. Because they were mobile target rich environments full of vets who could fight 1v1 and newbies.
Once a roll gets moving and bases taken these days, the constant question on range after each capture is where to next. And organically everyone loads up and goes to that "next". Once in motion it's not like a real mission roll out but, everyone is going to the same place to break things "together". Things that are organic work best in an open sandbox environment. Wonder if there is anything Hitech can do to help this evolution of the mission concept so new players get the point to tag along? Success keeps these sessions going for some time each night that they popup generating impromptu activity. There are probably several players who are the mavens that naturally sparkplug these events, who are not on every night of the week. Kind of like FBDred in the old days with his FreeBird missions. But, Hitech is not holding a gun to anyone's head forcing them to take part to level up or get their next bigger better toy.
