Yeah, I hear you Hellshade. However, I think there's less actual wishing for an alternate history so much as wishing for realistic plausibility. Fighting someone you shot down five times already isn't very plausible.
Ahh but therein lies the rub, sir. I certainly appreciate your desire. Makes perfect sense to me. Once you see them go down in flames with no wings from 5,000 feet...that should be the end of it. No argument there from me.
Unfortunately you can't introduce a non-fictional persona (the player), into a historically correct time line, give them the ability to make permanent changes (kill people) in order to create realistic plausibility without simultaneously creating an alternate history. Once you start killing off historically accurate Aces before their time, the alternate history has been made. You pretty much can't get one without the other.
And I would even be okay with that, but the problem (in my personal opinion) is you end up with skies in 1917 and 1918 that are quite empty of historical Aces, because most of them have probably been shot down by enemy AI fighters, blown up by flak, crashed due to mechanical failures, etc. They die long before you get the chance to meet them. I'm not sure which would be more frustrating...killing the same Ace several times and he keeps coming back or never getting to meet any in the skies at all because they all died due to AI fights you were never a part of.
If the Devs can find a way to make them killed only by player bullets, well now that might be something. You are still on an alternate history, of course, but at least now you still get a good chance to face them. The next hypothetical question would be, if they can die before their due date, do you let them live on after they should have died? Do you make it possible for Richtofen, Voss, Bishop, Mannock and others to survive the war?
