I used to almost exclusively play Air RB. Unlocked just about every aircraft in the game. At this point im definitely done with Air RB. Not saying ill never play it but im definitely not into it anymore.
You’re right. It’s amazing how good the vehicle and weapons modeling is but the air game modes are horrific. Air AB, Air RB and even Sim feels like an indie game from the mid 2000s.
Sim at least has an okay game mode with Sim EC but even that has some serious issues that Gaijin just refuses to address.
Ive pretty much transitioned to playing Ground RB. It’s definitely COD with tanks but you can tell that Ground is where Gaijin puts all their effort. It certainly isnt air lol.
It’s really sad to see aviation in the state that its in. Im holding out hope for the 2024 roadmap but idk anymore.
Ive been trying to get a new Air RB game mode or game mode changes for years( since the F4E was added) to no avail and the 16 v 16 ghost patch last year was the biggest slap in the face. Turned Air RB into a ripoff Air AB.
Im not sure what their issue is. I wonder if they even play Air RB sometimes or if they purely just look at stats.
It’s really frustrating. I dont think Gaijin really cares about the air game modes anymore and every match i join seems to be filled with 60-90% premiums so i even think the veteran playerbase is flocking away from Air RB.
We’ll see if they do anything i guess but for now im pretty much done with Air game modes.
Yeah that shit infuriates me so much. Cause that is when i actually have fun in this game. I legit play for those types of matches.
That is where i can use my knowledge of all these planes to my advantage. Before that its just a missile spam and a game of chance. I legit think i play the same every round, and sometimes i get 1 kill, sometimes i die without doing anything and sometimes i get 5 kills. When i get the ace i just feel like i lucked out and that many players just decided to play terribly and faceplant my sparrows. Its not rewarding.
Winning a 2v1 or a 1v1 is hella rewarding on the other hand.
cough Poland with 7.6k ticket matches but a light pillbox takes around 280-300 tickets cough China Civil War the moment the tanks are destroyed, the tickets will bleed indefinitely akin to a destroyed AF cough cough Korsun with the AI planes that don’t count towards tickets when destroyed but can bleed tickets fast
I can list more, and more, and more. Tickets should bleed equally, and the only time you should lose is when an enemy commits to doing objectives e.g: Base Bombing, GT, Naval targets, etc. This shouldn’t be such a hassle if Gaijin actually reworked most of their maps, no one cares if you make the map 20% larger or if you inflate tickets like Poland. This should 100% be a focus on ARB, yet Gaijin will always focus on GRB because of its profitability surpassing that of ARB, and yet they refuse to give an EC mode for “muh reasons.” to alleviate the problem they bandaged this whole issue by turning matches to 16v16 for God knows what, and yet there are still matches that are 6v6 and plagued by Ju-288’s. Most. Infuriating. Sh*t. Ever.
I wish the maps were bigger, some of them are, but they usually offer only one airfield. Still with the bigger scale you can actually try some flanking maneuver etc.
What I would like to see is the ability to respawn like in ground RB. Would make the match last longer and offer the possibility of ending with a better score overall. It would require more ground target of course, but in a single match you could take a fighter, a bomber and an attacker in the same match, making it more lively.
But yeah, Air RB really feels like a very old game mode design. It starts to lose its charm now…
Reject ARB, embrace ASB.
With the recent winter event, I dove into ASB and never looked back
I still think ARBEC is the only future where WT survives once they run out of vehicles to add. Until then we have ASB, if they don’t decide to ruin this mode as well that is.
SB is also almost abandoned by the devs with the only work now being a few BR changes. It’s unbalanced and suffers from random objectives that cause one team to lose. For example, one side keeps spawning AI bombers that get shot down, and the other side does not.
Sim is basically air RB if it had a token PvE focus and first person view. Like with air RB, gaijin has not taken the tiny steps that would massively improve the sim experience.
I feel you 100% but the props are still fun, and jet BRs without all aspects can be really fun too. I even had some extremely fun games in the Kfir C.7 where i ended up in isolated dogfights.
Although i agree so hard that every gamemode in this game is basically CoD with military vehicles. I loved Air RB more than GRB because i felt like i had control. In GRB i could always die to a plane or some random cross-map snipe or a revenge killer. But in ARB i could always find a mistake i did that made me die. In top tier that is not the case. Like the only mistake i always end up making is going into the center of the map, but if i dont do that i will just have 0 impact and will do nothing in the game anyway. So you eventually have to fly through the center. It sucks ass. And when you do, you open yourself up to 20 potential missile launches.
The lower and mid tiers aren’t nearly as bad as top tier but they still could use a lot of work. Some maps the 16 v 16 is still just too much and everything gets so condensed.
Air RB should really be split from BRs 9.7 and higher. Air RB TDM like what we have now but smaller teams and then Air RB EC.
i havent played for almost 3 weeks but today i played a few round 12.7… am i mad or has gaijin changed a few things… a lot of maps are now in the rotation that werent there for almost a year and i had a few matches with 12v12 teams… and this 12v12 is really a lot better than the current standard… has somebody else noticed these changes? xD
Biggest problem in ARB for me is the huge amount of time between action. 5 mins to queue, load, and start the match, 5 mins to take off and fly to the battlefield. I spend most of my time “playing” ARB just alt tabbed watching YouTube
This right here is why Gaijin turned top tier RB into a 5 minute death match. The players don’t have the required attention span to pilot their plane in an air combat game… Oh the humanity! 🤪
“Spending 2/3 of your game time in queues, loading screens, and flying straight is FUN and EXCITING GAMEPLAY! You just don’t have the attention span to stare at your screen and make no inputs!!”
The dynamic of it taking 3 to 5 minutes to get into the fighting is pretty consistent throughout all realistic battles of War Thunder. Ground RB has something very similar and sometimes you’re waiting around for several minutes even once u get to ur spot before any action happens.
The difference and the reason many dont complain about it in ground is because theres more to do. Theres scouting, theres artillery, theres spotting drones, theres setup. And ofcourse there’s the respawn mechanic which gives most players some skin in the game - aside from one death leavers, which typically is only 2 to 4 players per match.
There definitely needs to be some of these varied elements in Air RB. It certainly is stale atm and giving players options beyond just bombing a base and dying or join the huge furball would be great.
It’s exactly as Warpig says … The air game is about piloting, thinking about air combat and the capabilities of your own aircraft, the capabilities of the aircraft piloted by the opponent …
Which is seen all too often in the game…
start, the player flies to the middle of the map, close to the ground and attacks the nearest enemy plane without thinking, preferably a frontal attack…
usually within a few minutes after the start of the fight with the opponents, more than half of the players from both teams are out of the game
Gaijin understands the commercial side of the game, so for the most part, it will allow players to play what they want…
That’s why the game looks the way it does…
There are a lot of ideas to improve it, but the equation of the game is …
Is the number of players joining the game increasing? Yes. Are players buying premium machines more than usual? Yes. So there is no need to change anything…
Gaijin spends a ton of time changing game mode and map mechanics around in Ground yet the “if” portion of your equation rings even more true for Ground. So i dont think the “then” portion of your equation is necessarily 100% correct.
It’s just a matter of how many people are speaking up about it and at the moment, more people than ever are saying that Air RB is broken at top tier.
With the s300 and other SAM systems being in the files, i get the feeling we’re going to be seeing some changes to Air RB. It’s just a matter of when. If i had to take a wild guess, it would probably be along with the addition of Amraams and r77s. But who knows.
Yes, I do not claim that my opinion is the style of the only truth…
According to the next part of your answer, you prefer Top tier, I perceive ARB more generally.
I still believe that it would be best to cancel all enemy markers.
would satisfy players who complain about too big maps without action, short maps or arcade maps would be enough
maximum number of planes in the game, 16 vs. 16, wouldn’t be a problem at this point
high tier has radars almost everywhere, so players would learn to work with the radar
planes on lower tiers from the radar, there are quite a few of them and the battle rating could easily be adjusted
there are more planes that are deployed in battle, against much more powerful machines, they are basically dead … canceling the marker would improve their position …
The high-tier game is already ready for ground-based AI radar stations, or AI AWACS, which could transmit information to players…
We play with modern airplanes on maps that still copy WWII battlefields in style…
I have no issues with the idea of removing markers but i still think tiers 7 and 8 would need a team size reduction to at least 12 v 12, if markers were to be removed and we also should have multiple airfields to spawn from to help spread the playerbase out a bit and ofcourse spread out AI targets.
We probably won’t solve it, but I think we agree that the air component of the game needs repair, or rather modernization…
According to your previous articles, I think you are interested in the game more than just another online game, among many others…
Here, however, I suspect that GAIJIN is resisting making the game more sophisticated, precisely with regard to recruiting new players who go into it with hot eyes…