As said in title.
Right now, Top tier air has a 16 vs 16 format. It’s simply not viable at all, as there’s simply too many players to make the matches any fun.
We’re reaching a gen of fighters that are incredibly lethal and are harder and harder to defend against. Missiles have more and more power against countermeasures, the generational gap between 11.0/11.3 planes is way too large, and there’s simply so many missiles flying around that only F-14 and its boatload of decoys can survive for too long in the typical furballs the matches devolves into.
Heck, the dogfighters specialists like the F-16 can’t even dogfight since losing speed is an immediate death sentence from a third party plane.
The game at top tier would benefit a lot more from 8v8, it would also allows for full team matches between 12.0 fighters instead of having to bloat the matchmaking with utterly outclassed 11.3 planes. I’d also argue that changing the maps to be bigger won’t change things as the spotting system will make all players converge at the same place regardless how big the map is.
Another option to allows 16v16 would be to make a permanent EC mode at top tier, as it would offer more spawn options and less risks to devolve every game into a 10 km wide furball.
EC maps, like rocky canyon, show that larger maps do work as long as the objectives are spread out like in EC.
This is not at all exclusive to top tier, this is the case for every single BR and wouldn’t really change with fewer players.
Having every map have the size and layout of EC maps would be great. Tho offcourse im not sure a lot of the community would like it given how many seemingly enjoy they knife fight that is City
The best solution I think would be to have two different matchmakers for it, ARB CQ and ARB EC, that way the 5 minute furball players have their maps and the EC players have theirs
Even better you could turn off spotting for EC and it would make a much better all around game mode, getting bombers and strike aircraft more involved with something to do.
You can absolutely dogfight with most planes at most BR. Even at jet tier, you can have a decent dogfight between a F5E and a Mig21 for example. The distances are large enough to allow it as long as you’re not in the middle of the furball and have a bit of altitude to allow it.
But while a 10km distance to the main battle is enough to have some room for a fight at BR 5.0, it’s already in missile range for top tier. The engagement distance has shrunk so much you can’t even hope to do a one or to-circle fight without risking instant punishment.
It works… to a certain extent. I think having two different spawns points for each team would make it work better though.
The air mobility of these two planes is identical to top tier planes like the F16. And you can dogfight at top tier by making the exact same considerations as you would with the Mig 21. There being 1 extra consideration. You have to eat gras because otherwise you are dead by radar missiles. But thats just top tier and not dogfight exclusive
If you don’t like eating gras, thats a shame i guess. I do however understand the sentiment that map size should reflect player numbers.
maybe but the mirage f1 series, phantoms without pd radar and all aspect ir rocket its very painful. no have a chance to survive the battle… +1br its a very big problem in all battle rating planes or tanks.
gaijin change the br like type16 from 8.7 to 9.0 good and now always play in 10.0 with my 8.7 light gg. realistic or arcade not matter
The air mobility is. The capabilities of their weapons aren’t. But yeah, 10km isn’t much at top tier jet, that I agree with.
Having to hug the grass doesn’t help either, I agree. But changing the team size to 8v8 would also give better chance for more interesting endgame with 2v3 planes instead of having a full, one-sized stomp.
As far as interrupting a dogfight, the weapons are actually the same (there is some nuance, but it doesn’t change the substance)
Offcourse you have to eat gras, but again thats just top tier. Anyone within radar missile range is allready close enough that they can interrupt your dogfight with guns if they so choose.
When you dump all your energy into a dogfight that is the risk you take.
For smaller non EC maps like City, yeah it would be ok
Currently, there is no room for any meaningful gameplay at all, it is reminiscent of AB from the old days on BR 3.0 where 10 people play over and over and one team simply wins. No skill, no tactics, you just click 3 keys alternately and after 3 minutes everything is clear. Gameplay is shit.
the 16vs 16 has just brought the real problem to the front. map design is shit!
everything happens over 1 relatively small battlefront which was made for less players and slower aircraft. as new faster vehicles with increased weapon ranges have been added no systematic changes to maps have been made to accommodate them. large EC style maps with spread out bases, ground forces and air AI naturally disperse teams and lead to smaller engagements at a time rather than the usual big ass furball.
if all the bases and ground targets are contained within a 30kmx30km square on a map which is 100km wide where do you think everyone is going to fly to?
Dude base location is not a problem, EC maps playout the same way like the normal ones, only bots that are focused on only bombing bases benefit from EC maps and base spread. I would say deleting the bases would help more since maybe players who only care about droping their bombs would actually do something usefull in battle, it is so frequent to see F-4S flying straight into base not even trying to fightback or dodge incoming plane.
If you spread bases it only will make games longer as it is now in EC maps but it does not matter since game is decided in the middle anyway. After that is only the cleanup that takes time.
Dogfight will become less common since we are closer and closer to BVR FOX-3 engagments since we are approaching modern jets.
I would rather see AI bombers going for the bases with objectives to proctect them in order to win.
EDIT:
BTW 5.7-6.3 would be greatest BR to dogfight if GJN would delete JU-288.
Bases and bombers only criple the gameplay tbh.
Imo the problem with bombing is the huge reward for the player and the tiny effect to the battle AND the stupid auto ticket bleed.
Like in lower BRs where you can win a battle by destroying the AF it’s more important protecting bombers.
The problem with 16v16 is that it screws over every BR. There’s no good reason why we needed 32 players slinging missiles in top tier… people were already asking for 7v7 in the old 12v12 format.
The reason is because it’s very hectic… people who hate furball action get nothing but furballs, even on large maps because of how fast the planes are as well as the all-aspect weapons systems and 16 players per side.
The old top tier map sizes (from when F-14 was introduced) were great on 12v12 and they should make up a good chunk of the matches, with a few on the larger EC size and a few leftovers in Spain and City. In 16v16 everyone is carrying 6 missiles on average, so that’s 200 missiles, and even if people only get to shoot 3-4 of them in the initial engagement, that’s still way too much flying around!
The best fighter strategy is to take a meta plane and then bumrush the enemy team on the deck, getting kills with pulse doppler and HMD. That’s the one effective way to play top tier and it’s the vast majority of the time you’re going to spend in top tier given the nature of the matches. This was the strat in 12v12, but having less airspace filled with missiles meant it was more viable to try other opening playstyles, like climbing.
If there’s only one good way to play the game, maybe Gaijin are doing a crappy job at balancing the gameplay.
Gaijin should also return the old maps that were in jet tier before the addition of the large map sizes, such as Kuban and the winter maps - there are no winter maps in the current jet rotation, which is why you see dozens of people complaining that the map rotation is so bland.
It would definitely change with fewer players. I’ve noticed it in prop ARB tiers, it’s much harder to get a good fight going because enemy or teammate, there’s ALWAYS someone nearby to screw it up. Back when it was 12v12 it was much nicer, despite there being less kills to get, the snowball effect was much reduced.