So Giggles . . been a while . . .
I know what you are thinking . . . oh . . he wants that damned windsock
heh heh . . oh yes
There is nothing quite so melancholy and lonely as the orange windsock fluttering in the wind on the side of the runway, all alone, all by itself, with only the breeze to talk to.
You see, when you are lined up on the run way, feet pressed down on those breaks, staring down the runway, your eyes always glance towards it as if in a final farewell before we are also committed to only our wings and the wind as the ground falls away below us.
You wish each other luck, slam forward the throttle and let go of the brakes and leave it all behind and slip the bonds of this earth, just man, machine and the element that we were not designed for.
Its a profound moment of beauty . . . that final glance, as if asking permission to commit yourself to wild course of action
Thats all I was asking for, a little beauty
You know what you remind of Gaijin?
You are that guy, who meets this selfish material girl, ends up falling in love and getting married to this woman who cares about nothing but herself.
She sends all your friends away, sucks the life, happiness and joy out of you, dresses you up in skinny jeans and flowery shirts and surrounds with all her inane and superficial friends and drags you into her world of hollow smiles, empty words and superficial causes empty of any real feeling.
And now you sit there in the middle, lost, with a sad look on your face, while your new friends dance to music you don’t understand, to a beat you don’t feel, with their painted on smiles, pretending to have a good time, all the while mocking you for not being one of them and you look around trying to find something real that would make you feel alive again.
You are the guy who gave up his real friends and all the people who really cared about him.
This is the world that such people live in, devoid of love, beauty and things that matter, surround by selfish people hurling insults in your face, demanding you please them at every turn, for them the joy is to make you forget yourself and everything that made you who you are, and become an empty shell like them, dancing to a meaningless beat in a song that has no words.
You see Gaijin, in the world of video games, the greatest success you can have is to have a group of people who care.
That is what you had, right from the start.
You had forum that was legend, people you use to talk in hushed tones about “Forum Thunder” and the wild and crazy community that was war thunder.
There were people who knew the ins and out of aviation and air combat and history and they had the skill to back it up.
When you joined a game with these guys in the mix, your hand would tremble to push the throttle forward and rise to meet them, there were 109s in the sun, screaming focke wolves and mustangs, whirling spitfires and japans zeros, destruction was assured and returning unscathed unlikely.
It took courage, even in this virtual world, where death was a button to be clicked, it took courage to meet them and for the briefest to time, one would forget and you would be in the cockpit of a war bird flying out to meet a terrifying foe with no mercy during the height of WW-2.
And when it was over, and you returned to the mundane world of today, hands trembling, face flushed, breathing hard, you hung on to that courage, for even the briefest of moments, you were changed forever.
You gave that up, for your new friends, who would fly across the map, mash their space bar, bail out and complain that the reward was not good enough.
And when your friends, tried to teach them and drum some sense into them, tried to teach them to respect you for who you really were, you silenced them and sent them away.
What a sad thing to do.
You let these people abuse and exploit, your game and you blamed your friends for exploiting the game
These people who would not have survived with out buying premium and golden eagles, you let abuse your world just to prove your friends wrong.
Now you think that these people who ravaged your business model with a mouse and key board are going to buy your VR game in spite of the fact that they never bothered with the inside of a cockpit or flight stick.
You see Gaijin, data will show you what you want it to, you ravaged SIM because the data showed you it was being exploited, you never accepted that it was your new friends that were exploiting it, now you want to count your new friends as potential customers for a game you made based around SIM and VR and actual flight controls?
Look . . I don’t wish you ill in any of your endeavors, my kids and me have even played enlisted and had a blast. I hope you succeed, but in my estimation, you have spent a great deal of time, trying to please people who cared nothing for you. The data reflects that.
I have always said SIM was the jewel in your crown. It was what made your entire world real. You were to be the Janes of the modern military world. You attention to realism and your detail was what was going to set you apart.
Not a lot of people needed to play SIM, but it had to be there, the place for the best of the best, to ply their trade, and rest of the masses , would always look up at it as the place they wanted to be, the level of mastery they wanted to achieve and it would have made them proud to be part of your world, in which there was a place for every one, but at its heart, there was a gravitas that could not be ignored.
A niche where talk mattered not, only skill . . . and the hook
If you were skilled enough, Gaijin was pleased to have you and you could play for free.
Your new friends, tried top pluck that gem out and hock it at the pawn shop.
Yeah . . .like a greedy theif that got his hands on your most valuable possession.
A world devoid of beauty, courage, honor, dignity . .just the in crowd gyrating to a meaningless beat that means nothing, trying to cop a feel, get something they will neither respect nor value, but discard.
Such is the fate of men who lose their friends. One should hang on dearly to one’s friends, for their words are true and they will stand by you no matter what.
I think you should get your real peeps back.
You don’t need to say anything or make a big thing of it, but at least understand you did wrong
You have messed up SIM beyond all recognition, I don’t think you can roll it back
So lets just leave it as it is for those people who don’t know whats what and just need a place to do what it is that they do. I would suggest cutting down on the exploitation, its costing you money, but if thats is what your new friends need and that is what you want to give them . .carry on.
First the easy stuff . . . minimum effort
Lets make a new mode . . . and lets call it
A) “Hard Core”
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Historic battles. People who own an aircraft model in any air force, must join the game on the side of the air force that fielded that aero plane, with a historic skin, plus a couple of decals if they so choose.
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No hud, no friendly markers.
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EC format . . . named bots with the setting really cranked up. To fill in the empty slots and for havens sake, fix it so they can rejoin when players leave.
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You can have all tiers, I don’t think more modern jets will be to popular . .but what the hell, give it a go.
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For the Love of God and all that is holy . . . Add the Great War. It was a crucial time in aviation history and cannot be over looked.
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Return rewards for fighter kills to what they were.
Don’t compromise this mode ever again. Ever . . no matter what anybody says, keep it clean and pristine and fair.
B) Set up a 1 vs 1 server. It can be for all modes. Players can choose if they wish their gamer tag displayed or not. This server is not ranked. It just matches you up with some random opponent and you fight and practice. This is a place that will allow people to grow,
Just this will bring all the old guys back . . . don’t make a thing of it, just welcome your old friends back and give them a place to dance in the rain and play in the mud, laugh and be merry.
The hard stuff
- You want to find some way to bring Tanks into EC. I think when an EC ground battle is about to come up, it should be a lobby that people can join. As it stands, your reward system, pays out when ever a person leaves a match, so no issue there.
With actual players on the ground in EC battles . . . it will make a big difference to the intensity of the ground battle and the over all EC game mode.
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Instead of AI bomber formations, lock bombers into the cockpit and give them 3 AI formation members. It high time you implemented Gunner turrets and did away with the external 360 view.
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Air craft shelters, with a little bit of a taxi to the run way. Already what you have, just let people park and spawn in them.
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Lighten up on the forum and let people have their fun, its like the pilots crew room, thats where they unwind and talk smack. Its not the end of the world.
Thats really all you need to do to get your mojo back, all this BR bullshit and RP and SL nonsense, leave it to the guys who think a spread sheet is what this is about.
However, the jewel in your crown, must be pristine and pure, a thing a beauty that everybody holds in awe.
The kind of place, people look at and say to them selves, I want to go in there, but I am sacred.
And finally
if you can find it in your miserable broken heart
a
Wind sock