No one is fooled. Self imposed ignorance aside, three man flights were, are and will remain unfair to the vast majority of players. You may defend your position that they are a reasonable addition by sighting their training ability or their social inclusion value, but you can still train someone without assistance, you can still play with only one friend. You may say that they are easy to defeat, but in truth we all know they are not. You may forward the belief that they are widely excepted, but the majority of players do not flight up.
WG gathered evidence to show that 3 man flights were very effective and had a higher win rate than 2 man flights or even solo pilots.
What do you expect from a team oriented game that is social by nature. That is what MMO's are all about.
While the majority may not flight up that is their loss. Even I enjoy my solo time. Sometimes i just can not be bothered with other people.
You may hide behind the belief that you don't care about stats, but this is a stats game. You may pretend that since bots arrived you don't look at stats anymore, but you do. You may delude yourself into believing flights don't matter to those stats, but you know that's not true. Why should the vast majority of players sacrifice the pleasure of feeling achievement because the minority doesn't have the talent to rise above mediocrity without help?
I do not hide behind the " I don't care about stats " never have never will. I am concerned about how I am doing versus myself and improving in planes I am bad at while increasing my survival rating.
Although I am not a " stat hound " if I were I would only fly the most advantageous planes and flight up more often than not.
Some players are very good at this game. They would be at the top of the charts without assistance. They would dominate without wing men. They are just good pilots. However there is a huge proportion of well stat'ed players who would be average at best without flights. It's my guess that it is those players that want flights retained and expanded. Well boo-hoo, you're just going to have to struggle on with only one other player watching your back. One other player tilting the field in your favor. You may have to play against your friends instead of ganging up with them. OMG you may have to challenge your abilities instead of mitigating the odds to conceal them.
So who cares if some players are not as good playing solo as they are flighted. If it takes people flighting up in a SOCIAL designed MMO so be it. The more people the more population.
Who cares how they get their stats, it is what keeps them involved in the game. The problem in the world today is that more people are concerned about what and how others do things rather than
improving oneself to rise above others. Far to many people buy into the " I don't want to be a sell out " idealism and be better than others.
If and when this game commands the population that necessitates 15 vs 15 humans again, then I'm all for three man flights. When the board isn't tilted toward the few and the majority stand a fighting chance, than bring em back. As it stands now, three man flights are grossly unfair to the community as a whole.
With the inclusion of bots it would be easy to adjust the parameters of the matches to return to 15 vs 15 matches with the balancing of flights on each side.
Even if a it is 3 humans with only a flight of 2 versus a flight of 3. The match would be a fair balance of FUN.
If the SOLO human had enough intelligence to work with the 2 man flight.
Prior to 1.5 you would see flights on each side of the match. RARELY would you see a match that was 15 Solo versus 12 solo+3 man flight.