Although i agree with most of your views (in general) - imho the fellow player is correct. Ground targets are marked and visible for both sides - just to enforce player interactions = the PvP player knows where he can find PvE players.
Agreed - or Air AB+.
The increase in complexity from Air AB to Air RB is practically non-existent.
Yes. This is how we use ground targets and AI targets in War Thunder but its not the reason for the ground targets and AI targets. It’s just how the game has evolved since there has been little to no development of these passive interactions for years.
Again i ellude to BVVD himself saying something translated very similar to this a few interviews ago. Ground targets and AI are for passive players.
But yes many of us as more PVP interested players use the PVE elements to guess where enemies will be.
True, if a teammate already “clearly” has the kill lined up I’ll likely keep an eye on them if I can, but I won’t actively try to land hits unless it seems they’re escaping/etc.
This topic seemed more about being on the receiving end to me, and the whole “we were having a gentlemanly 1v1 until the enemy’s unsporting teammate jumped in and killed me” kind of attitude is one I’ll always take issue with. Like, no, the enemy’s teammate did their job. :P
The sole purpose for ground targets is to lure less skilled / experienced players (mostly designated non-pilots) into a mode which is basically a PvP mode - as gaijin creates the illusion that PvE actions might be a way to participate.
The fact that you get 3 times the RP for a base kill vs a player kill is just the most obvious sign that this is no accident.
I don’t trust any official statements :-)
Haha it wouldn’t surprise me.
Idk if the devs have even thought that hard about this.
War thunder doesn’t really have a direct competitor. Unless we make a big deal about it, they don’t really have much incentive to invest in the game modes.
I think it just boils down to developer burnout.
Look at BVVD on the Russian streams. Read @Stona_WT response to comments on the forums. The dev team really just seems burned out. They’re not having fun anymore.
I think the reason that they barely touch the game modes and that they don’t fix glaring issues unless forced to, is that they’re bored with all this. Its a job. Not a passion.
To a long term War Thunder player and outsiders it really is confusing how outdated the aviation game modes are.
I mean if we were developing aviation game modes from scratch under the “Arcade - Realistic - Simulator” categories, i think a general outline would be pretty easy to come up with.
Arcade Battle Length: 5 to 12 minutes
Realistic Battle Length: 20 to 40 minutes
Simulator Battle Length: 1 hour +
What do we have now? Arcade lasts 10-15 mins. Realistic lasts 7 to 15 mins and simulator lasts 2.5 hours…
It’d be funny if it wasn’t so tragic.
I don’t think there is “the receiving end” for third partying. It might suck more if you get kill than when your target gets killed, but it feels bad either way. We are just pointing out that there can’t be any sort of realistic engagements, BVR and WVR, when there is 20+ players all inside of missile slinging distance of each other for most of the match’s duration.
I just want kills and death to be more meaningful. Not this “Oh man, I only kept track of 6 enemies and then this 7th one came from above and killed me. Must be a skill issue. Onto the next game.”
Imho the increase in difficulty has nothing to do with time, it is about:
Arcade battles: Fast paced game play as a plain shooter - with a mouse and keyboard.
Realistic battles: More tactical & strategic game play - and actually flying & controlling an aircraft with a joystick and without this point and click nonsense with mouse aim and instructor.
Simulator battles: Removal of crutches like AEC, auto trim, 3rd party view, markers, etc. to be as close as possible to irl
Game times as mentioned by you seems reasonable.
Air RB is currently point and click but i get what you’re saying. Maybe once upon a time it coulda been a joystick mode but now people are married to point and click.
One of the very early interviews with the devs had a section that discussed what they were aiming for when they made the game modes and they explained that they wanted an average game time of 20 to 30 minutes since they figured that was about the time that most people had per day to play games.
Even the most popular PVP games today like fortnite, warzone and battlefield have matches that range from 20 to 30 minutes - battlefield being 30 minutes.
So that seemed to be the foundation of what drove their game mode design when they first introduced aviation game modes. Thats why i started with a generic outline regarding match length.
They dont even come close to their original 20 to 30 minute average anymore. Id bet its like an 11 minute average game time for air.
competitive was the key word here - all aspect slingers like the warthog and frogfoot should NEVER face flareless planes
No,… the mouse aim might stay, but having no Markers on ennemies what so ever is currently good enough at high tier since we have radar, because the current is a nonesense.
That’s when you got lucky enough to get past R-27ER
I disagree - as long as basic physics like flying the aircraft is already implemented in arcade via mouse aim and instructor, the goal of something calling itself “realistic” in a flight mode should be the actual controlling of the aircraft.
The fight with others is just supported by markers (like sound, dots or contrails) - and your logic has the “flaw” of having aircraft without radar and the tactical advantage not to compromise your position by not using your radar.
It boils down that outside SB nobody is enforced to learn anything about flying as mouse aim and instructor do this for them.
So from a holistic pov gaijin assesses tankers as smarter than pilots as the main goal of a tank is to shoot first (=target identification without markers in Ground RB) whilst the main goal of Air RB should be the maneuvering of your aircraft that way allowing you to get a position to shoot at your enemy (all aspect AAMs aside) whilst applying “real” physics.
But instead of flying to get a shot - Air RB focuses on the shot itself - this is way less demanding than the step from AB to RB for the fellow Ground players.
This idea also opens up posibilty for more Iterdictor (F-111, Su-24, Tornado) and Penetrator (B-1, Tu-160M) type aircraft to be added to the game for the players to enjoy. They would thrive in this mode as a supertior strategic bombers thta would go for the furthest and tougest objectives. Almost defeceless themselves they would require careful route planning or fighter escort for the successful objective destruction, and I could imagine that would reward a team with large ticket bleed for the enemy. However the need to reward all involved players arise (I am mainly concerned about escorting fighters, since there is a chance that they would just waste time, so it should be a worthy endeavour for them as well), the system should be though out for this purpose.
I like ARB controls how they are right now. I like simplified avionics controls and displays. If I wanted “as real as possible without enlisting” I would play DCS or Falcon BMS. I think majority of War Thunder players feel this way. War Thunder struck gold with their balancing of realism and accessibility.
Escorting aircraft could simply get some points per unit of time while they are close to their strike aircraft/bombers.
Another idea would be that escorting aircraft also carry some A2G weapons so that they can hit the target upon their arrival as well. Maybe some radar installations along the way that can be hit with ARMs to make a next pass easier.
i feel like having Air RB being alike SB (which mean that only Joystick players cwould be able to play the game efficiently), is a “NO-GO”
As you said: Arcade lies in constant fight and maneuvering around a swarm of ennemies.
SB is alike True Simulation games (alike DCS or IL-2 Sturmovik).
but RB was a middle ground for those who were good enough to play as in SB but with Mouse-keyboard, in order to give EVERYONE the possibility to play the game at a difficulty level they would like to go to.
that’s why forcing players to go RB with joystick is a problem, in my PoV at least.
however, RB can be forced upon realism.
“No markers whatsoever” :
you say that logic has flaws, but there is none to my PoV of Realistic battle
not having Radar on, doesn’t mean you can’t get spotted by ennemy radar,
but it does hides yourself to the ennemy’s RWR.
Meanwhile not having radar on mean you can’t use Fox1/Fox3 missiles so you’re rendered useless on long-range shot.
you spoke about:
contrails - apart F-14’s and Su-27’s spamming down AIM-54’s/R-27ER, nobody flies high enough already.
dots : of course dots would be there, i mean → you already have dots in SB,… i don’t see any trouble with that.
sounds : when everyone flies at mach 1.2+ on the deck, you can have as many sound you want, but you’ll hear nothing accurately enough.
which is the difference between simple players (90% of community) and SB players (10% of community), one needs a game were tactics can be used on Macro Gameplay, and the others needs a simulator with 18 screens and a fully clickable cockpit (oh shit that’s DCS).
i did played with joystick, but not enough to have the guts to say that “i know SB”.
However, i do know enough about flying and physics to know how to use my aircraft even with mouse aim+keyboards
we currenty have much more bullshit having mouse aim players going for “CoBrA R-73 kill” already in RB modes,… this goes through using FRControls → was Cobra used in Combat situation even once in real life? answer is no, shall we see it that often ? certainly not.
so RB being a Mouse aim gamemodes doesn’t makes you unable to use FRControls in it.
“Objection, Hearsay” :D
well, it doesn’t bother me, does you?
many aircrafts players are only dropping bombs on some bases.
many tankers does only camp from one side of the map, shooting the ennemies at the other end.
i do understand that your say is about the community, when i consider myself that 90% are completely ignorant to what they’re doing in the game.
yet, this isn’t only relevant to RB mode, but to the whole game.
i mean “maybe”
some smart players are also good enough to make you shoot first but making you miss instead, so they have time to deal with you.
everything without markers one is identifed as ennemy → nothing new you just know where was you’re ally that just died around you, so you can triangulate the ennemy position from that [1 of the few difference with SB mode, for tanks]
IRL (from WWI up to day), many air combat started by a face to face encounter.
certainly not as much as BnZooming on an aircraft that got surprised in the blue, but still enough to have thousands of stories about how it goes in history.
the main is to shoot down your ennemy, and you mostly have 3 ways to do it:
1- Chasing/BommNZoomings - safer ones–
2- Cutting accross the ennemy trajectory - opportunity shots/can end up in Chasing fight
3- Head-on and go tactics - not the safiest as you put yourself at risk as much as the ennemy is at risk
nothing in “main goal” says you have to be behind to kill someone,… as it limits yourself to 1 of those 3 situations.
Which mean all Fox-1/Fox-3’s and All aspect Fox-2’s
Which then doesn’t apply to HIGH TIER ERA that is was talking about:
i don’t see your point there, RB is not allowing the Crazy Arcade maneuvers you can have by pressing 1 key then another,…
RB Flight Physics feels 500% closer to reality than what is Arcade, while keeping some features of it.
yeah, but no as demonstrated earlier on how you’re wrong about Air RB main goal.
I mean the game only demands
To a Tankist:
To a Pilot:
The main difference is then that AIR RB isn’t requiring you to know how to spot ennemies since the ennemies are automacilly marked depending on how far away you’re from them.
[basically why i ask for markers removal at HIGH TIER, in which radars can partially compensate for that loss of sight]
In the meantime, i see people going high enough to be spotable by contrails, as good as the tankist being in plain sight of your gun.
And those flying at tree level as good as tankists hiding behind 2 houses and firing through windows oranything in order to not be spotted.
if AIR RB needs anything → it’s more airfields and larger maps(with spreaded objective) + forcing players to start from differents airfields, evenly numbered.
In order to limit the Furball fight we have today and that is not going to make anyone improving themselves.
as a conclusion, we both may have different PoV on the matter, but we at least agrees that RB mode should be revised, and not going further into being an Arcade mode “bis”.
Honestly love most of the ideas except the marker ones. If we go with more strike aircraft related games though, I believe we’d need to greatly increase the amounts of targets in the game, and also greatly increase the game time. 45 mins for a game like years ago would be ideal, and the death of a player vehicle should still drain large ticket amounts (which they don’t at the moment, allowing bots to win a game for the players at times, even when they were the inferior team). Air rb rewards should also be increased, it’s one of the worst game modes for SL or RP at the moment unless you come in first or kill half the enemy team, it’s the only mode that suffered after the SL “Improvements” in my opinion, on average you get a quarter of the SL you would get in the past, if even that.
it was an idea i prosposed in the past, and which never was implemented.
my idea was to propose same rewards as bomber if bomber reached target, and x1.5 (when in squad, to avoid abuses) / x2(with randoms) rewards if you were doing kills in within a certain area around the bomber player
this would have been applied for medium and heavy bombers (nothing on the like of SBD-3 dauntless or TBF-1c avenger)
I’d also add a more prominent multipathing.
The distance of the guiding aircraft could work again with multipathing. If the launchibg aircraft is far away multipathing could be more prominent, IE the current level of multipathing could begin at 150 m AGL at a distance >30 km. This would work reversly at closer ranges, at 3 km multipathing would begin at 5 M AGL.
This would make evaiding SARH missiles easier. If deviation for the guidance of FOX-3 missiles would work similarly people could get closer to each other while being able to evade radar missiles more easily.
More dogfights = More fun
I have a different opinion on markers.
Instead of removing them or not, I think they should just be reworked;
Remove ALL information from them: no distance, no vehicle model, no name… just a red dot.
That way, you avoid dragging matches for too long or making the game too inconvenient, while also not having everything handed so much by markers.
In this case, markers would merely be an indication that the enemy is over certain direction, instead of telling you which threat is it and where exactly.
Basically; turn markers into a merely orientativo thing instead of such precise and visible information.