We all know that you are not the first to say this. I think it is a short-sighted point of view.
So what the was purpose of NMY in the first place? Because it doesn't balance the arena .... at most it makes a few people like me rage quit after FSO or When I log in at 10pm PT and I can't even Fly a Corsair. Making me quit the game for balance just makes me want to quit the game ... as in stop paying for it .... permanently. I hope you like the low numbers because the game is getting worse we don't even have the RONA refugees any more!
The game has so much breadth, yet so few people take advantage of that. We already have a zillion different airplanes, all of them as true-to-life as any computer game has achieved (with the possible exception of DCS, and I haven't flown that to compare).
You have 3 IL2 games Il2:1946, Il2:COD, IL2:GB. Micropose is back and is working on updating warbirds. If realism is an issue you have World of Warplanes and War Thunder.
The sandbox permits all manner of play styles, customizable at your wish. Tying yourself to one plane, on one side, to do one thing, means you miss out on all the rest. I've been flying here for two decades, and I'm still learning new things (such as, possibly, that the 205 is not a complete pig).
I like to play the way I like to play. I don't do GV's I don't fly 4 engine buffs, I like a handful of planes and if I can't play the way I want, fly what I want, I will take my money to someplace that does ..... and the number of subscribed AH players drops off that much more.
Beyond that, comparing the toxicity of the present community to that of what we had when HTC split the arenas is comparing Donny Osmond to Sid Vicious. We now are nowhere near as horrible as the community was back in what some now consider the Golden Age. Paraphrasing Muhammad Ali, if you dream that thought, you should wake up and apologize.
- oldman
In short I'm going to disagree with you on this. I've been around this game since Beta and I was in Air Warrior before that I even worked for Gamestorm/Kesmai, before that it was playing Air Warrior for Windows on AOL and AWDos on Genie before that ..... This community goes back far longer than AH.
I missed about 8 years of AH community toxicity specifically the Skyyr years You know where Skyyr and Kruel urinated in everyone's favorite breakfast cereal almost ended my squad that has been around since 1988/87ish and wasn't stopped until he started urinating in HTC's Wheaties. Ya I missed those years .... So other than the Skyyr Years that I missed this community has progressively been getting worse over the years you can blame it on millennial or whatever but this game was a lot better before I left than it has been since I been back seems all the toxicity is still here but now there's just less people.
I really don't see much point in arguing about it .... HT will do what he wants.
If NMY was about balance than give us the tools to balance the arena like unlimited country swaps or really low wait times to change back like a few minutes. Basically make it so I can immediately get back after a country change due to NMY rather than making me wait hours or longer. I figure that's easier than tweaking the NMY values or making it turn off when numbers get to low or tweaking the perk system but all that works to.
I personally think we have more than established that NMY is in fact a major problem, question is will any one do anything to fix it? .... I doubt it, I was griping about this back in 2011, which is why I want to break my squads dependency on AH. I don't think we can survive it's demise like many squads didn't survive the death of Air Warrior III/MV. I'm honestly starting to beleive no one really cares enough about this game any more and it shows.