server update Server Update 09.03.2023

[Sturmgewehrz 38]

8 hours ago, Stona said:

Can you please link me to place, where "most people" asked for smaller teams in Air RB?

I mean, that seems to be the general sentiment among the playerbase, specifically when it comes to top tier. Personally I'm kind of surprised that you would think otherwise.

In any case, it is frustrating that such a significant change was implemented without touching base with the players to see what the players actually thought before moving forward with it, as there definitely seems to be a disconnect here. As it is now, nobody can link anyone to a place where most people were for or against smaller teams, because no chance was given for that dialogue to happen before the change was made.

[Tivoru 4,926]

I would be great if on top tier maps there will be 6 or 8 basses at once instead 4. Right now 2 strikers on team can take out all of them. Even fighters fly with bombs.

Edited March 9 by Tivoru

[sweet_babu 18]

for smaller maps in ARB the 16 v 16 is not a good idea. It's just a spam of missles.. can we have smaller maps back the previous number? for larger maps then 16 v 16 is fine.

thanks

Brian

[SirPyrrhic 39]

I've seen a lot of requests for people asking for smaller teams, but rarely if ever one where people asked for bigger ones. Please make it make sense

Edited March 10 by SirPyrrhic
Phrasing

[[email protected] 1,771]

9 hours ago, stratmania said:

May I ask what was the rationale for this change? This increase is quite significant. (I am not outraged, just curious as this change didn't seem forthcoming at all).

 

In addition, can you clarify/confirm if the limits for bombers and/or top BR aircraft in these games will be the same, or adjusted proportionally? (It used to be 4 max bombers per team and 4 max aircraft with BR matching the battle BR).

 

Considering the larger amount of players in the game, is it possible to introduce more bases per game (in respawning base gamemodes) or increase the total damage required to destroy these bases (with proportional increase in tickets depleted and rewards given based on existing values)? This would help avoid "redundant" bombers, especially heavy ones if there is more than 1 per team.

 

 

This is certainly a good point, and should be addressed. I'm all for the increased team size, I would likely have been asking for it if it actually occured to me it was a real possibility, but the hard caps on top-BR and on Bombers need to be reevaluated.

 

IIRC limit on top-BR in a match is up to four per side, which previously was 1/3 of each team... but now it's 1/4. This will almost certainly negatively affect queue times, especially at top BR, among other side effects. The bomber limit is similarly even more of an issue now, as again only 25% of the team can play them, further exacerbating queue and/or matchmaking issues at bomber-heavy BR ranges (Ju 288) but also making them even more helpless than they already are, as there's now inherently a higher percentage of fighters.

 

The top-BR limit is a tricky thing to balance so I can't say with certainly that it should be raised to 5/6 per team, but the bomber limit absolutely needs to be. Better yet, the latter should be removed entirely, being nothing but a relic of a time when bombers had crazy good AI gunners and could rather easily end matches on their own; I've been here for five years, and that was already long gone by the time I started playing. We really shouldn't have limits on just one type of vehicle anyway (literally the only limited vehicle type across all modes), especially when it's long since out of date. Just make sure all maps have moved to the respawning bomb point layout (no airfield), then ditch the limit and rebalance BRs if that creates any issues.

[MysticEclipse19 4]

Teams definitely did not need to be bigger. The maps felt over cluttered when they were small with 12 people and making the spawns farther apart was hardly the answer. You could hardly get base kills due to the number of teammates that are also bombing bases. Not to mention making it through the miserable brigade of enemies that lessen the chances dramatically. Adding more people would not be favorable until the objectives, bases and airfields in the map are more spread apart. I understand that most people that play Air RB are going to go dogfight so the spread of ground targets hardly matters in that regard. But some players want to grind a few base kills or kill ground targets without always constantly being harassed by the enemy team. 

 

By all means I'm not suggesting that standard Air RB maps should be as large as EC or Operations; however, the main focus of the battles should not be on a 5km by 5km area of the map when top tier jets can confidently engage each other well beyond even 10km. 

 

Another point to be made would be, "what about the lower tier aircraft like props? larger objective, base, and airfield spread would draw those games out to an unfathomable length." and my answer to that would be to scale the how the objectives, bases, and airfields spawn in based on BR. Biplanes certainly dont need the spread that BR6.0 need since the average speed is much lower but 6.0 definitely needs less space than the supersonic jet fighters need. In theory it sounds like an easy solution, in practice I'm sure that's not the case due to terrain and other map elements placing restrictions but an effort should be made that benefits the quality of life of the game better than "just spawn the airfields in farther apart."

[Alikiwi55 122]

Some interesting changes, most of which have been covered. My concerns are the worsening problems that have come along. I've mentioned elsewhere about the cursor jumping to the 2nd monitor very frequently and even 3 times in one aerial match. Naturally it got me killed. First is there anyway to turn OFF the messages in Naval on how to fight fires, do repairs etc.. I mean seriously I've known this for a year, I do not need to have it plastered on the screen. Unfortunately no one I know knows this answer. Also the game now crashes completely, once a very rare problem but it's happened 3 times today so far.... And before you go suggesting it (again), my video drivers are up to date. Hopefully someone can fix something so it's not frustrating to play, or have some sort of real solution, it would be much appreciated.

[Adr_Farling 264]

10 hours ago, Akwa47 said:

Speak for yourself , it should be perfect with the bigger maps now that "we" all love .

Why speak for myself? In case you didn‘t notice: I‘m not the only person calling for smaller teams. Read the comments on this thread, read the comments in the thread I linked and look at the reactions on your and my post. Its not just me.

Edited March 10 by Adr_Farling
Grammar

[Magician_Yang 49]

Maximum players in an Air RB should be less than 10. And big maps should be limited to BR>11.0.

Now the bigger maps and more players completely ruin the BR below 10.0. All the battles are in a mess

[JeSuisLarry 26]

How did you come up with this, when the part of community that you should have listened to screamed otherwise.

 

I have played since 2013 beginning era of RB (HB).

I could stomach following:

Spoiler

- Airspawn maps (even the asymetrical ones like New Guinea and so on..)
- 25 minut match cap
- Auto-win missions (early iteration of Afghanistan is what I can think of rn.)

- Mixed lobbies (Nothing breaks the immersion than flying alongside what you were meant to shoot down IRL.)

- EC map design (Only Vietnam is somewhat decent, try to take off with fully loaded F-84 on Afghanistan)

- Fuel loadouts, not sliders. (Why the hell would I need min. 1hr of fuel for my 25min mission ? Hurts performance)

 

But matches of 16 vs 16, condensed on map where 12 people were already enough, in an environment, where there is potentially enemy team disposing of mix of aircrafts, that

combined can negate all the advantages of your own (Zeros + P47s teams for example), and that’s just props here, in jets (esp. 11-12.0) good luck tracking it all, and not running out of countermeasures.

This was never going to be a balanced game, and that’s fine, as it was never said it would be easy task.
But literally doing only thing it could be done to make the issue even more pronounced is a act of sadly a "Lunacy".

Instead of using us for money pot for "other FPS game."

As a community I believe we should get some respect.

Especially us long time veterans, reminiscing of the good old days!

 

Peace.

[papszi99 228]

16v16 would be fine if the combat was spread out on the map, we need more targets on the map with different spawn points so that players don't cluster in one place!

[BACKDOORMASTER 0]

i hate to say but when 3.3 plane vs and meet with 4.0 and 5.0 its seem overpowered,hope there is a fix

[Stona 72,510]

2 hours ago, BACKDOORMASTER said:

i hate to say but when 3.3 plane vs and meet with 4.0 and 5.0 its seem overpowered,hope there is a fix

AFAIK It's not possible to meet 5.0 in 3.3 aircraft in regular battle. You are doing something wrong (check your line up, check line up of friends you are in squad).

[stratmania 7]

15 hours ago, [email protected] said:

 

This is certainly a good point, and should be addressed. I'm all for the increased team size, I would likely have been asking for it if it actually occured to me it was a real possibility, but the hard caps on top-BR and on Bombers need to be reevaluated.

 

IIRC limit on top-BR in a match is up to four per side, which previously was 1/3 of each team... but now it's 1/4. This will almost certainly negatively affect queue times, especially at top BR, among other side effects. The bomber limit is similarly even more of an issue now, as again only 25% of the team can play them, further exacerbating queue and/or matchmaking issues at bomber-heavy BR ranges (Ju 288) but also making them even more helpless than they already are, as there's now inherently a higher percentage of fighters.

 

The top-BR limit is a tricky thing to balance so I can't say with certainly that it should be raised to 5/6 per team, but the bomber limit absolutely needs to be. Better yet, the latter should be removed entirely, being nothing but a relic of a time when bombers had crazy good AI gunners and could rather easily end matches on their own; I've been here for five years, and that was already long gone by the time I started playing. We really shouldn't have limits on just one type of vehicle anyway (literally the only limited vehicle type across all modes), especially when it's long since out of date. Just make sure all maps have moved to the respawning bomb point layout (no airfield), then ditch the limit and rebalance BRs if that creates any issues.

To me its more that having more planes in the game means potentially more attackers which potentially also carry bombs (wyverns, US attackers mainly); this would mean that the average amount of bases left for bombers to actually bomb decreases (and this isn't accounting for the fact that there will be more fighters going after them since max amount of fighters in a game has been increased from 8 to 12 per team.)

[House_of_Schmidt 101]

This 16 vs 16 thing for upper tier aviation is a disaster. Its alright in the EC maps but every single match, one team just steamrolls the other. Gone are the days of ending the battle with a 1 vs 1 or 2 vs 1 fight. I used to love being apart of that ending or even just spectating it.

 

Gaijin is trying to hard to please everybody in Air RB. This is proof that we need a split mode.

 

Please consider splitting out the EC maps into a separate Air RB matchmaker (with respawning) and then having a standard matchmaker with smaller teams and smaller maps. 8 vs 8 would be a pretty good balance for the smaller maps. If you did respawning then 12 vs 12 would be fine for the larger maps.

 

 

[Superdebma 84]

12v12 battles were fine. Improving amount of players is just another step to make RB closer to AB meat grinder. I like RB because players can apply individual skills in duels and small group fights. Chaotic bunch of players is making it random. Don't take me feeling my attendance can affect result of the battle.

[EhtXCIX 0]

Hi, not a frequent poster and would just like to give my feedback to this update.
I play mostly high tier and top tier ARB, and my opinions are from that standpoint.

 

Large Maps

I think the large maps are an excellent addition. They're just about the right size to spread planes out a bit before combat. However, I think EC objectives should be present, as the condensed midmap, bombing points, and general attention focus points still drive all the planes together.  I do think these larger maps should be restricted to minimum 10.3-11.3 match bracket, as well.

 

16 vs 16

On the other hand, I think the 16 vs 16 team sizes is a bad addition. I had high hopes upon hearing about it, but quickly grew to hate it. I feel like it sucks the life and fun out of the game- both on small and medium-large (~90km) maps (but moreso on small, of course). It's fine on the 130km maps, though.

• Team advantage as one side dies snowballs much faster, much more aggressively, and makes it more difficult to impact each match as an individual, or save a match that's going south.
• Large furballs and groups of players make combat feel less pilot skill oriented and more about who's faster on the draw with weaponry. Extended fights have become rarer, and people often die in the first pass or two.
• Even when I get high kill games now, it feels very empty because it's often just launching missiles on overwhelmed enemies and scoring easy kills.
• As winning games progress, I find myself frustrated at having to compete with so many teammates to get a good fight or a kill.
• Dogfights often end quickly and abruptly now, and previously fun 1v2's or 1v3's are much rarer as well.
• There's significantly less respect for flameouts and dead-but-still-floating planes, as there's so many people competing for kills.
• Meaningful communication with both other teammates and squadmates is reduced, as it's hard to communicate anything of value in the hectic mess, and it's hard to direct cooperative dogfights anymore.

Air RB starts to feel more like arcade than anything now, with very little mental engagement and more ramming my face into the enemy and competing with teammates for kills. While my performance stats have not drastically changed, I certainly am having much less fun. Please give us back 12 vs 12.

 

Long Term Suggestion
My within-reach ideal suggestion for ARB would be either 8v8's or 12v12's on these medium-large maps with increased reward per player kill, and plenty of EC-style objectives present and a game timer of 40 minutes. I think this would add more options for multirole and strike crafts in the higher tiers, and serve to spread players out more, and utilize more realistic plane tactics with extended fights and a variety of pilot skills in use. A short runway would be present, as it is in early tiers, for near-field rearming at a risk.

 

A further extension of this idea would be to simply bring EC-style gameplay to ARB as a new game mode, with repair cost paid on respawn, huge maps, and continuous matches.

 

I understand that suggestions like this are asking for a lot, and just hope it's food for thought. Realistically, I only really hope for 12 v 12s back.

Edited March 12 by EhtXCIX
Clarification