I first played AA at a friends house in July of 2002, v 1.0.This was something happening on the latest year of life of 2.8.5 aswell (to a smaller degree), there have been countless attempts to get people to play different maps, but indeed the community is now really small and you often find more or less the same people playing the same maps, and many might not be so friendly/polite as they should be.
Went and built my very first PC just for AA. Had my own account at version 1.2.1
Love that I can now login and play again however this community is not the greatest, and the players active and their attitudes are even worse.
I really did not expect to see the majority of players online to be only playing pipe and hospital. The clans with servers and their admins seem generally hostile and aggressive to anyone who doesn't suck up to them.
Also it seems a large number of players are still playing for raising stats rather than fun friendly gameplay, which really slows things down and dulls the gameplay.
Great thing going here but I find the community is lacking positivity. Not many friendly or fun players out there, too much needless bickering.
Game is 15 years old, get over yourselves.
IMO the game actually began to go downhill when they started to remove the original HomeLAN official servers and allowed people to run their own official servers.I agree with you about the total, massive lack of respect I see around these days...although I don't get what you mean about the modding. Are you talking about game features or map features? As far as I can recall this version of the game only received rather minor modifications in comparison to the original one (like the SAI).
I played this game since the very very beginning. Before there was SF, before there was even Honor. A lot of things changed around that time, the hardest thing for us original players to get used to was having to play by different rules in every server. It was such a hassle getting kicked and bitched at for normal game functions that simple minded players couldn't combat against.
The other thing that really changed (and ruined) the game was it felt like around the time AA2.0 came out with SF, it became a lot easier to play for the masses, my memory may not be 100% correct but I even think they enlarged the hitboxes because of the CS and COD players who couldn't get any kills without camping and waiting to shoot someone in the back.
I tried coming back here to 2.5 Assist but the game is modded even more to force you to play a certain way and it's not my style. Unless people are breaking game functions I see no reason to force them to play by your rules or style or face ban. There simply aren't enough players to dictate the gameplay in that manner.
Biggest problem today is the lack of players, and what few players there are today are definitely not friendly. I want to be involved here and try to bring back some guys but in all honesty there's not much to come back to. This isn't a friendly place and the way people run their servers don't promote fun gameplay majority of the time. "My server my rules" isn't exactly a fun environment to come back to, especially when some of us have been away for 5 or more years.
Just my opinion not that it will matter to any of the elitists here.
I agree with you about the total, massive lack of respect I see around these days...although I don't get what you mean about the modding. Are you talking about game features or map features? As far as I can recall this version of the game only received rather minor modifications in comparison to the original one (like the SAI).
I remember when I found this game,I downloaded it for Dario and he started playing with Combat elite force.Was so much fun..Best AA fun ever.But now its all competition! Its not for the love of the game no more..I tried playing night after night just to not make this game die,,But just to be disrespected to keep people in line. I would love to still play this game,But you cant any more.People come to servers just to annoy you,Cause there better.So they say!! Feel sorry for it to die out,To much hate and jealous.If people like you more then them and they do every thing to f you up..Even though your a good person. For me its all gone I may play for 15 to 20 mins, and that's it. Not the same anymore >>>And I was one of biggest fan of AA here..I can feel you Carmy, all Nomad servers and Hosp Paradise are having a subnet ban being set by my IP, which means I can't play there (with my IP). This also means that no one here using the same provider can join those servers because of the subnet ban. We have over 560 000 citizens in this eastern part of Finland and majority of households using stationary internet connection here are using the same provider as I, which means they use similar ping as I. My friend Sherif has same provider and is living in same city, he is banned from those servers as well because of this subnet ban. We have friends for whom we'd like to introduce the game but it feels pointless since most likelythey are already banned from about 30 servers before they even download the game.
I can feel you Carmy, all Nomad servers and Hosp Paradise are having a subnet ban being set by my IP, which means I can't play there (with my IP). This also means that no one here using the same provider can join those servers because of the subnet ban. We have over 560 000 citizens in this eastern part of Finland and majority of households using stationary internet connection here are using the same provider as I, which means they use similar ping as I. My friend Sherif has same provider and is living in same city, he is banned from those servers as well because of this subnet ban. We have friends for whom we'd like to introduce the game but it feels pointless since most likelythey are already banned from about 30 servers before they even download the game.
There are persons who are trying to do their best for this game and persons who are doing their best to kill the game.
This kind of bans makes no sense, they are set to me but I can bypass them if I want to. Not everyone can and that's why it affects on others. Why this kind of ban was placed? I have no idea, but it'sfucked up because it has so huge impact.
Hatefull community you say?
Dunno, maybe it's just me, but even most modern games don't appeal to me much anymore, they all look like poorly redrawn copies and no originality.Well said, I agree.
Ah I miss the Golden Age (2000-2010) with America's Army, Need for Speed, Grand Theft Auto, Ronaldinho, the world seemed more peaceful and at least I wasn't bothered much about the future...
I guess the only specific example I noticed (because if that inability to find a game on other maps) is not having the 203 rounds on Hospital. Was a good way to deal with door spam shooters, RPG campers and WWR campers. Again, I'm not sure if other maps have been modified because often the only games are the tired old Pipeline and Hospital.Was a good way to deal with door spam shooters, RPG campers and WWR campers.
Ultimately the largest issue here is the community is just plain awful and I don't want to waste my time with the total disrespect and unfriendliness.
I started playing in 2006, my tracker from my 1st account (that I stull use today) started 28-09-2006. Not sure which version it was, but I loved it from the first moment. I remember playing on a very old computer, that could barely run any of the maps smooth.
Then I found out about JRTC Farm Raid, this map ran relatively smooth so I played that map a LOT. Not much later I bought a newer computer, so now I had a much better FPS and the game became even more fun to me. I met a whole lot of guys from [JAG] clan, and not much later I became a member. I played with these guys for a long long time. I had to play all nighters on a regular bases, because most of them are from the US. I was still in school so all nighters were no problem back then hehe.
After some time I got in some trouble with the leader and a few members, they started to accuse me of cheating more often and finally I decided to leave the clan (and a bunch of friends). It's kinda funny though, my new computer made me play a lot better and not much later the hackusations came up. I understand it a little bit though, they were the best clan at Farm and getting ur a$$ shot daily didn't make them happier. Eventually the leader got me banned for having 5/6 identical PB screenshots with AASA, identical screenshots at that time could be a sign of hacking, and for the AASA it was enough to give me a ban. I literally lost all the fun in this game because it was a BS ban, I never used anything to enhance my performance, but oh well, it is what it is. I appealed but I couldn't deliver proper proof to get rid of it.
Not much later I joined {FRJ} clan, also an active Farm clan but with better understanding of gaming and what is possible and what wasn't (or in other words, better players on average)
Not much later that POS AA3 came out, I was excited but after trying it I decided to stop playing. AA2 pretty much died out, AA3 was unplayable so here I was, not gaming anymore lol.
In the meanwhile I played BF3 and BF4, which was good fun, but it just doesn't match the feeling that I always had from AA2.
Then years later I found this website, and I found out there actually were still people playing it. I downloaded it, searched around for my account details, and got back into the game. It changed, not much maps are being played, but the average level of players is good. Coming back I was a bit rusty, didn't know all the keys but ey....I was having that AA fun again. I have been around for a few months now, and besides all the unnecessary drama I enjoy it everytime I play.
I know quite a few of the [JAG] guys, some are still around, there pretty cool guysYea most of them are awesome, kinda lost contact with pretty much all of them.
Yea most of them are awesome, kinda lost contact with pretty much all of them.
Do you also know guys from {FRJ} ? Or does Torrentthief ring a bell? He was such a funny guy.
Hey Tj if u have a facebook check em out, they might be by invite only, if so pm ur real name I'll have striker approve you to join in, if u wanted to chat with the old fellowsThanks, have been a member there for a while. But I got frustrated because of what happend in the passed an called the leader some bad words. So don't think I'll join again lol.
https://m.facebook.com/groups/198992118717?ref=bookmarks
AA has always been a love/hate relationship for me. I think we all love the classic days and funnily enough, those are all different time periods. We came in at different times, knowing different people, enjoying different servers and different crews on different versions. But we all share the same fondness for a specific period. The way it used to be.
It's almost heartbreaking, the poor timing I've seen in this game. I came into this game around when 2.6 was released, maybe a bit before. This was a weird time. All the anti-cheat sites were still popular but MD5 checks didn't exist and you could do crazy easy cheats and only get caught if the server admins were lucky enough to get a screenshot. I met Crusade just as he was starting to take off on modding and hacking, bringing back a lot of the old school coding to life that was pioneered by PAS clan and Rifle over at the Hazard AA Tracker. I had learned about modding and loved to run my own server and looking to make it better, I found out about custom maps and that's when I met BlueBlaster. Both him and me were scraping together the remnants of the custom maps once created by enthusiastic people at aa-maps.net. We were too late to work with them but instead just browsed through the forum which was more of a graveyard. This is just a tidbit of my personal history with AA and the great people I've met through it. I say the timing is heartbreaking because, knowing what I know and seeing the timeline unfold, I was always too late. Finding out about cool shit after someone else was done with it. I've come across so many super talented people over the years I've been involved with AA. It's impossible because it's gone but I often wonder what would have happened had the timing been right and a lot of us gotten together to create something amazing. Brilliant website coders and designers, creative UScript, LUA and C++ coders, 3d modelers, countless talented mappers, tons of eager people willing to learn. It's been such a waste. Looking back, a lot of these characters quickly burned out. I'm sure they all had various reasons but I can't help but think that given what we know and have today, if that same enthusiasm and knowledge they had 10 years ago, if that was around today... wow.
I don't know what it is about this game but it's just heartbreaking and frustrating. I miss the way things used to be. I am disappointed in the waste of potential due to timing.
What do you miss? What do you wish was different?
The community actually lacks of ppl capable of turning ideas/projects into reality, also theres a lack of trust.
Those that are capable or at least can make it, are taking care of its own stuff/life, the game is stuck and I bet it will be for now and for the next months(I'm talking positve, but id say years :P).
It lacks ppl. so there for it lacks every thing required. what would help would be leadership and consistant leadership. It needs rules and the same rules for evetyone. Not rules for one and they change for another.
It needs leader who will adhere to a higher level than the average user. If you dont have a consistant foundation you have nothing to build on. So it starts at the top. And once the top gets the foundation right. The rest will fall into place. You need barriers for children to keep them in line. So get rid of the sarchastic leaders. Thats always gonna help.
I for sure miss the old days, I downloaded when v1.3 came out and played religiously until 2.8.5.
I miss the old twl and clan matches, the option of many servers on all the levels. I miss how the community used to be :(
With that said, this is an old game and I would say that we're lucky we still have a player base at all.