This looks very interesting... sadly time is the limiting factor here. MMOs tend to have a time-draining effect, stealing gaming time from all your other games, particularly so when your gaming time is not a lot to begin with.
No need to worry about that here. An arcade match takes about 10-15m! That's it! It's super fast, and it's more about the gameplay itself than it is about the meta-game levelling and stuff. It's nice to get to a new level with whatever faction, and unlocking more planes, but you can and will enjoy yourself without that. The matchmaking is pretty solid, as far as I can tell, so you'll never be at a big disadvantage.
The interesting thing is that a lot of the real air combat theory still applies to the arcade version. This is even more evident since most people are unaware of this, and make very easy opponents. Here's a few tips:
- Speed is life. Stay faster.
- Altitude is life. Stay higher.
- Energy = speed + altitude is life. Stay higher and faster!
- Maintain situational awareness (SA): know where the enemies and friendlies are, how high, how fast, closing at what rate.
- Never go in alone.
- If there's a single enemy being chased by at least 3 of your friends, don't bother going chasing. You'll loose energy with little probability of getting a kill.
- If there's a "plane train", before you get behind the last enemy LOOK AROUND. Your SA should tell you whether it's safe. If there's an enemy at under 4km and closing, reevaluate your options.
- Slowly get to know the planes. Know those you can outturn and those you can outrun. If you can't outturn the enemy in safety (no enemies around, SA!), don't burn energy by trying to. You'll significantly reduce your chances of escape.
- Help your friends: there's nothing as frustrating as managing to evade enemy fire, dragging the pursuer back to base, and all of your friends ignoring you so that you get shot down nonetheless. If you save that guy, that's 2 points in your favour: one friendly that didn't die and one enemy that got shot down.
At first, no need to bother with all this. Just go in and see how the planes handle, have fun, shoot down things, unlock other things, be happy. But these are important points