Here are my initial impressions. This is my opinion only, and don't take anything I say to mean I don't like it or think it won't be fun. I'm just giving feedback and ideas for you to consider.
1. There should be some island terrain around. An archipelago of islands, atolls scattered around the arena. It could provide some tactical complexity once it gets to the deck, Besides, You have very nice terrain graphics you should be showing off. Also, islands would help provide some visual orientation.
2. Sprinkle a few clouds. I know you want to minimize graphic load to support a wide hardware spectrum, but I think you should risk a few.
3. I'd like to see a grid overview of the various battle populations without having to select each one at a time from the combo. something similar to:
4. It may just be me, but I kept losing my joystick. I'd have to restart the game to get it to see me moving the stick. But I can't reliable repro this.
5. Films? I create films but is the film viewer going to be part of the distro? Really, for the intended market, it should be integral to the game UI and not a separate program to find in your folder and run.
6. I can see a roster, but that is everyone in all matches? Maybe columns in that grid to show what battle the player is in (H2H, 4v4, etc), state (queued or flying) . This is similar but different than item #3. Two ways to view the battle population vs player location.
7. The clipboard seems insanely large. Can the radar be separated from that? When I am bringing up the radar, I generally don't need the other stuff, and when I am using the other stuff, I don't need the radar. Make the radar a separate window and maybe scale-able. I'd like to position it some where an leave it up so I am not having to bring up that giant billboard.
8. Is vox not enabled? I saw settings for it, but I wasn't getting it working. That could be a problem on my end.
9. When I bring up the radar, I'd like to have a border rim to the radar display that is divided into 4 quadrant arcs. The arc that is the direction toward the closest enemy plane colors that segment red. That give me a general direction to head to find the closest thing to shoot at.
10. The biggest issue I see is the US vs Axis plane set. One is all "turn and burn" , and one is all "Hit and Git". The U.S. planes would be crazy to turn fight the Japanese planes, and the Japanese planes will get tired of chasing the blue planes around the circle when they don't want to get caught. At co-alt or alt disadvantage, the U.S. planes best chance is going to be to go straight HO and roll the dice on his superior fire-power and armor. Seems like that all might lead to a lot of frustration.
In the Free-for-All, it seems to me both sides should have all planes available.
11. (I didn't get to play the4v4 etc so I assume they are not what I am about to describe.) What would might make heterogeneous planesets work is a mission to concentrate the action. A micro-scenario. Example: 4 A6M2 air-spawn and are escorting 6 (AI) Betty bombers from point-A to their drop point. 4 F4F air-spawn near and have to kill 3 of the 6 Betty before they drop. That puts a time limit on the F4F booming/zooming. Sooner or later they have to take risks or lose the match. The victory conditions will compel them to engage more aggressively the close the Betty get to dropping.
Is this kind of what you are eventually planning? Or is it always jsut going to be spawn in a circle and fight?
12. If players are in a battle queue there should be a set time to wait before the battle just begins anyway with AI to fill in the open positions. You don't want to keep 63 people on ice forever waiting for one last player.
Overall, I think it has potential. It will be interesting to watch.
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CptTrips
