I played Aces High 2 for a good two years from about 2006-2008. I joined what turned out to be probably the best-fitting squad form me and I enjoyed the hell out of the game. By the end of the 2 years, though, it was starting to feel like a hamster wheel since there's no real goals to be achieved. Then our squad broke up- I think everyone just sort of burned out at the same time- and once the squad broke up I just quit the game.
About a year and a half ago I joined again, but I only lasted about 6 weeks. I didn't join a squad and that really is key to enjoying yourself in the game.
Anyway, I told myself that there is no reason to join an MMO at this point in my life, given that there are so many free multiplayer options out there; I'm talking games like Rise of Flight, BMS Falcon, the ARMAs, DayZ, Red Orchestra, etc. etc. But I just sort of said screw it and impulse signed up again to see if I can get hooked all over.
The game has changed a bit since the last time I played. The graphics are much more up to date and they have a ton of new aircraft and vehicles. I spent all tonight flying the Yak-3, a plane that wasn't in it before, and not a plane that I've ever flown in any sim.
I don't know if I'm going to stick with it long term, but I'm going to see if I can find a squad and re-discover the old enjoyment for a while at least.
<S>
Toonces
I'm curious.. have you tried War Thunder yet?
http://warthunder.com/
I'd be interested to hear how you feel after playing for a bit, Toonces. I flew Aces High 2 from it's inception in 2000 to 2006. I agree about the importance of squad membership to enhance the enjoyment/survivability of the game.
Funny, but the other day I was bored and decided to see if my first MMO combat sim, Warbirds, was still alive. Sure enough, it is! That's been going now since 1996. Amazing.
Quote from: Nefaro on January 08, 2014, 05:12:06 AM
I'm curious.. have you tried War Thunder yet?
http://warthunder.com/
No, I haven't.
Quote from: Toonces on January 08, 2014, 09:25:02 PM
Quote from: Nefaro on January 08, 2014, 05:12:06 AM
I'm curious.. have you tried War Thunder yet?
http://warthunder.com/
No, I haven't.
All the cool kids are doin' it. :P
I tend to enjoy the Arcade Mode battles, since I don't need to break out my HOTAS, TrackIR, and all that mess. But it also has a couple higher levels of realism available too, along with singleplayer dynamic campaigns and such. Free-To-Play even, so there's no cost to check it out.
Just sayin... it's pretty fun and has options.
Quote from: Slick Wilhelm on January 08, 2014, 11:49:23 AM
I'd be interested to hear how you feel after playing for a bit, Toonces. I flew Aces High 2 from it's inception in 2000 to 2006. I agree about the importance of squad membership to enhance the enjoyment/survivability of the game.
Funny, but the other day I was bored and decided to see if my first MMO combat sim, Warbirds, was still alive. Sure enough, it is! That's been going now since 1996. Amazing.
Meh. It's more of the same.
It's hard to say how much is me, and how much is the game. I live in Hawaii, so the time difference is a bitch. Let's say I log on to play around 5pm my time; that's 8pm on the west coast and 10-11pm on the east coast. On a typical weeknight a lot of the player base is thinned out by the time I log on. In the evening I've lost most of the U.S. but it's still too early to pick up too many Aussies. So on weeknights the main arena was a bit thin. As you can remember, the main arena is pretty big, lots of land to cover, and if there are only 200 guys on, split between 3 teams, and they're not all furballing in one area it can be a snoozex.
I was going to try to hook up with the Arabian Knights, but again the time difference was just a killer. I only had one night where there were more than 2 or 3 online. I flew around with them some to get a feel for their gameplay, but by the time I was ready to ask to try out for their squad I never saw but a handful of them on.
I cancelled my account tonight before I got charged for my second month. There are plenty of free MMOs to try; I don't think AH2 is a good fit for me right now. Maybe when I head back to the mainland I'll try it again. I don't know how much is the time difference, how much is War Thunder, and how much is a combo of the two.
So anyway, that was that.
Quote from: Toonces on February 05, 2014, 12:41:42 AM
I don't know how much is the time difference, how much is War Thunder, and how much is a combo of the two.
War Thunder is free-to-play in a
World of Tanks-style system.
Since the plane tier system has been compacted recently, I'm not sure how difficult a time it is starting off with Tier 1 airplanes but I recall getting through them pretty quickly in the past. Being slow, they still have a turning advantage in most cases but their firepower will be pretty weak since they're early war stuff, light on guns. You should be able to progress pretty quickly and have a variety of airplanes from different nationalities with little play.
There is no single massive open map. You'll just hit 'Ready' and be taken to a mission with around 20+ players on two teams fighting it out with some basic objective. These battles still have sizable maps but the sides are placed ready-to-go. The Arcade Battle mode is simple enough to play with mouse & keyboard okay, in a random mix and map location. Historical Battles take place during a certain battle and you can only fly specific aircraft models available from the two sides to choose from. The flight model is also a bit more realistic, notably regarding accel/decel and stall characteristics and no lead aim point in front of your chosen target. You can still use the mouse & keyboard in this mode.. just make sure you have the control surfaces also mapped to some handy keyboard keys. I tend to use mouse & keyboard in these since I don't have to pull out all my hardware but it has all the usual support ( and TrackIR).
You will always find a fight, no matter what time it is. Even on the US servers, in the middle of the night. War Thunder is so popular that you don't have to worry too much about twiddling your thumbs. However, you may have to wait a few minutes to get into Historical Mode battles during non-peak times. The combination of a very restricted flyable plane list and the more difficult flight modelling makes it less popular so I have rarely seen the matches "pop" as fast as the Arcade Mode ones. Fortunately the latter are still pretty fun and fairly representative other than the lead target indicators (you can boom & zoom just fine nowadays, for instance) so if you don't wanna wait, you can get straight into a fight with those in seconds.
Since it's free, there's no reason not to try it.