Great post, quoted for emphasis. Couldn't agree more. Nothing inherently wrong with enjoying arcade, but there's so much more to this game when you make the jump to realistic/sim. What a game.

Second this. Me and me clanmate have been looking for games (and creating them) in sim never to get more than 5 people in a room. Now the game is really intense with 2v2s having to communicate to avoid friendly fire and to coordinate attacks and battleplans....Having a full server would be nice too.

Think the reason arcade is popular is due to realistic's "stall happiness". Have good speed and try to pull off a manuver STALL. Come out of a dive and have superb speed and try to pull of a manuver STALL. Any manuver at any speed what so ever results in STALL unless piloting the plane like an old person drives a car (very very very sloooowly)

The best thing to do in Realistic is to just ignore the stall warning. I mean, most of the turns I make the stall warning flashes in my screen, but nothing happens. Not sure why the dev's put it in there, especially with the low threshold.

I cannot deny that yes they stall, some quite easily but I'm telling you adjust your elevators and you'll find it easier. Look some folks will only ever play arcade but here we are on the game creators website so I have to assume most folks on here are slightly more than your casual player. Again this is just me but what makes this game unique is that you actually have to pay attention to what you're doing, its hard on purpose! These planes used to fall out of the sky sometimes and the guys that flew them had to be very aware of this threshold and many many other things espeically managing your speed. You have got to keep your speed up, the quickest way to get killed is to fly too slowly and the quickest way to kill speed thankfully also happens to be the quickest way to stall and that is by yanking on the stick. If you manage your speed through proper stick control the co-benefit is you won't stall because you're yanking on the stick. If you don't like these things then enjoy arcade I totally get it BUT if you want to actually play what we are all excited about here, a flight combat SIMULATOR on a console then learn how to fly a plane. Flying sloooowly has absolutely nothing to do with it.

I think he was actually talking about not yanking the stick, but moving it sloooowly ;).

everyone is right that arcade is definitely easier that the other modes, but that doesn't mean that every plane flies exactly the same. each one still has its own handling characteristics which you must learn to take advantage of if you want to be successful.

i played on arcade because i was new to flight-sim games, and i still play arcade online because it's hard enough to find a strike game as is, and people either get disconnected OR quit the game IF YOUR BEATING THEM:-x:-x:-x:-x

Thats not strictly true, arcade favours fast turning planes only.

For example if I chose the ME163C its speed factor is completely neutralised by the leveling system which allows a Hurricane or YAK to keep pace, but get into a turning battle and the Hurricane or YAK will win everytime, therefore with the exception of 3 or 4 planes arcade is virtually pointless for all the other planes in the game.

But the next mode up realistic is crap for two reasons

1. No bugger bar a hardcore few play it, so you can wait for hours for a decent game.

2. You so much as sneeze and your stalling!

I don't know what Realistic your flying on, but the one I fly on from time to time, I have no problem with stalls. Just because the stall indicator comes on from time to time, doesn't mean your screwed right away. Just keep an eye on your speed, and make sure it doesn't go down below 120 or so, and you won't stall. You'll just be on the edge of stalling really?
But I prefer simulator, and that is a piece of work which I highly enjoy.

Really, they should change the setting options back to what the PC version had.

For example, you could turn on/off stalls, limited fuel/ammo, or overheat individiually on the PC. So all else still matters (turn rate, speed, climb rate) and you could use historical tactics and the game was fun for newbies.

That's how arcade games should be played - or least give the difficulty options like the PC game had - more people could enjoy it - make it so players know what settings are on or off before they join a game.

The PC setup worked fine and I don't see why much more of it wasn't carried over to consoles - again I guess it's the dumbing down for console sub-humans.