Hello ^^
As a general note, not every game is for everyone. With games totaling in the millions world-wide, it's impressive if an online-connection-dependant game can stay afloat (Yay, puns!). With massive games such as CoD:BO2 and other "main-stream" gamers being shoved into the minds of games morn, noon, and night, there's naught else one can do other than play with those what you can find and be happy with it. I honestly have never found a crew I've not enjoyed playing with. Whether it was a group of level one Captains (Yes, 3 captiains and one Engi, meself) or under Zill, I enjoy playing the game. I fix things, run around, and generaly have a good time. "Friendship" is an added bonus. Mostly to pass the time between having my hull blown out. But let's not point fingers and get them back on our decks. Thank you ^^
That's really generic and doesn't say much of anything. Other games have larger communities and they aren't Call of Duty or Battlefield or World of Warcraft. People have room for several games in their lives. While I disagree with a lot of what Aythreuk says, that main point about team stacking being a big issue still stands. If you weren't lucky enough to get a great crew the first time you played, on the day of the sale you were met with gamecrashing bugs and hopelessly stacked teams, any sane person would have written the game off as shit. We, the players, can't do much about the bugs we've already posted about, but we can control the team stacking to a degree by sheer peer pressure. It has a real effect and if we want a larger community we need to take some initiative.
Now, since this thread's been posted there HAS been some initiative. To be perfectly frank I don't the flight schools are going to accomplish much beyond communicating that the game is so hard you need specialized training that only a handful of people will ever be on to get, but that there's a desire to do something like that means the community does want to address the issue.
What I think is having more of an effect is the change in attitude towards that "AI is better" joke. When I first started playing during the Steam sale I ran into that comment a lot and it gave me a negative impression of the game's community. I've heard it a grand total of once since: the guy was telling people joining his crew to leave because he preferred AI, so everyone else just proceeds to shit on him, saying if he can't lead newbies better than AI he's a terrible captain. Now I'm sure some pansy is going to whine about being vulgar, but the fact that people are willing to be vulgar in defense of these new players (and then proceeding to kick ass with them) speaks MUCH louder than the quiet denouncement here on the forums. It's like with baseball, sometimes it's worth arguing with the umpire just so your players can watch you do it.