why not have several objectives like this though fill the map with activity and give players a reason to fly anywhere but dead center
Very much agree, RB EC would at the very least be a great test bed for more dynamic objectives in RB
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We have also bridges on older maps (Korea, Operation Uranus, some tier I & II maps) and we have some maps (old designs) which allow a more demanding game play:
So even if your OP is referring to jet combat - the basic principle of a more demanding / challenging game play is nothing new for gaijin. If you upscale this map in order to deal with higher speeds of jets you can enjoy “missile thunder” and your requests for a larger target area are fulfilled.
Either you missed my points entirely or this might be a translation issue - but imho you mix up some things:
- Furballing at higher tiers is not exclusively a result of missing alternative targets - it is a mix of low skill floor to participate, pure grinding intentions of the overwhelming majority of players and plain stupid map design - and actually the logical consequence of being a plain shooter in the eyes of most players.
- I agree that asking to change things is never bad - and actually the only way to improve things. But as outlined earlier: As long as Air RB is optimized to fulfil the needs of the (highly profitable) market of minors looking for instant action - the game looks like right now.
Same here - i used tankers as synonym for Ground RB players.
You refer to a much more demanding game play which includes secondary targets and actual objectives like escorting a strike force into contested airspace whilst using air refueling on the way in and out.
In an ideal scenario you would have Wild Weasels to kill enemy SAMs, stuff like EF-111s for electronic warfare and AWACS support. And outside of SAM and enemy fighter ranges stuff like B-52s, Tu-160s, or B-1Bs would pepper enemy targets with waves of stand-off missiles.
If you think this to the end - a desired goal for passionate pilots, but not for the average wt player.
The idea in itself makes sense within prop BRs - late to very late game if you can’t kill the last guy and you are on those few maps on which you have to kill large pillboxes (like on Uranus or this Chinese map) and/or tanks to reduce tickets, like on Sicily coming from the eastern side of the map. So there it makes sense to swap a light fighter into a bomber with multiple drops…
Due to the multirole design of all high/top tier aircraft and the extremely short average match time it makes no real sensefor those BRs.
Actually not - imho very old map designs had variety to a certain degree. But gaijin has them just on a few old maps - and they actually nerfed them.
How? Some years ago you had the chance to bomb enemy columns whilst crossing a bridge - so with a perfect (timed and aimed) drop you could kill the column and the bridge - and you get points for killing both.
Since a few years you get only rewarded with the points for killing the bridge (if marked as a target) and the enemy ai ground units just vanish - without any score for you… You can verify this by playing stuff like a Ju 88 A-1 on Sicily (light targets) - if you come from the left side of the map - the most south enemy column crosses a bridge - you won’t get points for killing them if they are on the bridge.
Did you ever played RB EC? In which year? Or are you just repeating claims of others?
I agree to a certain degree that Air SB maps are way more suitable for jets - but your claim “RB for the grind” is describing the root cause for the downfall of Air RB.
Sorry but this is nonsense.
Surrender a whole game mode to Ground RB players which ruined the mode in the first place? And to allow unskilled wannabe pilots to perform speed grinds of whole air TTs just with base bombing???
Never ever.
Why the hell you see a need to push actually skilled pilots away from Air RB (just by leaving it as it is) with the reference “who don’t mind flying 15 mintutes” - Seriously??
And regarding fighter domination - imho fully intended to be attractive for rookies - as almost every obstacle for getting kills without brain power were removed.
Look - i fully support any Ground RB mains, even my son enjoys playing tanks (idk what went wrong) - but the root cause for this mess is the abysmal bad economy of Ground RB which forces them to play Air RB - and not because they want to play the mode.
Same here - the average Ground RB player is used to get killed in a match - as this is an essential part of their game set up in order to facilitate a game play which boils down to a battle of SP and not actual skill.
Air RB is my only mode exactly due to this “one match - one life” approach. You are (at least in theory) forced to learn to make the right decisions at the right point in time and to learn strengths and weaknesses of all planes in the lobby - and to fly a plane. And if you made a mistake - game over.
As some friends fly Air SB - idk why they do it, but i admit i flew Il-2 with FR controls over a decade ago. The wt Air SB mode is boring like hell, abused around prop BRs and prone to be a target for cheaters.
So even if RB EC would deal with spotting cheats thanks to air markers - i doubt that your currently pending suggestion would be considered - even if hundreds of upvotes would be added.
In any case - good luck with your suggestion!
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So you want to gatekeep the entire air RB mode to suit the tastes of the so-called ‘passionate pilots’, because you dont like ground mains playing air.
Right.
And that is a good idea why…?
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There is no gatekeeping - Air RB is already ruined by Ground RB players.
And it is not that that “I don’t like” Ground players - they are simply not here because they want to fly and learn - they do their grinding stuff and i understand their reasons why they join Air RB.
Fact is that the overwhelming majority of matches is decided how many PvE players are in which team. The team with less tankers (=mostly PvE players) wins.
And playing successfully PvE in a PvP environment is useless above BR 4.3 - and lower you need actual skill, and this is extremely rare.
I mean i can use a reserve tier tank, rush a cap, gain the SP for a fighter and ruin the day for the average tanker trying to revenge bomb another average tanker in an actual tank - but i don’t do this as there is no challenge to clap highly untrained opponents.
Just watch some of the vids provided by the fellow player @ULQ_LOVER to see his air opponents there are on average just target practice.
Edit: I saw by accident that you game experience in Air RB is zero games. I appreciate your interest, but from my pov it makes no sense to continue with this exchange. Thx for understanding.
In my “awesome maps” list… pity it seems to have gone away to be replaced by the everything-in-a-few grid-squares-in-center-of-map junk that most battles are now.
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You can very easily see how air RB has been tailored to the low skill player in the last 2 years - respawning bases with increased rewards for bombing them; 16v16 lobbies that make individual skilled players mostly irrelevant to the outcome of a game; outcome of the match no longer significantly affecting rewards; high speed planes with mediocre agility going down in BR while agile planes go up (low tier mustangs, corsairs and bearcats went down by .3-.7 while A6Ms went up by .7). Getting kills no longer feels like an achievment and dying no longer feels like losing a competition; most of my kills are from distracted enemies or base bombers while most of my deaths are from third parties that have not been detected and jumped out of nowhere.
And I have big doubts that this is going to change - seeing how many premiums flood the 9.7-11.3 bracket and how little games happen at 3.3, 6.0, 7.0 and 7.7 it’s simply not financially viable for gaijin to go back to tailoring to the 10% of high skill players.
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it’s simply not financially viable for gaijin to go back to tailoring to the 10% of high skill players.
Honestly it does not make much logical sense, either. The mode should be balanced around the majority, not the small minority. I do agree air RB needs changes, but completely alienating ~90% of its playerbase aint the way to go.
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Although i agree with the general message of your post, i would like to clarify some things:
- Air RB and Ground RB were always more connected than the casual player is aware of. Forcing tankers to fly (CAS or CAP) in their own mode and to gain SL and RP in Air RB (as it looks easier) just fulfils various purposes. The most obvious one is to play victim in Air RB - for actual pilots.
- Air RB and Ground RB are no rocket science, the core game play is similar.
- The main problem of Ground RB players in Air RB is not a lack of skill or experience - the same players become (sooner or later) usually experts in killing enemy tanks - and they know everything about their own and enemy tanks.
- The main problem is that gaijin was always keen on keeping the requirements to participate in Air RB as low as possible so that tankers and other rookies could participate, despite their actions were usually not suited to have any relevant game impact.
- But there was always a kind of natural order - you had 3 non-respawning bases and an airfield to bomb with max 4 bombers since ages (2017?) so there was no incentive for other aircraft to bomb bases.
- The introduction of respawning bases in May 2020 (imho a result of the F-4E introduced in March 2020) was a game changer. Almost out of nowhere everybody tried to get a piece of the cake and bombed bases.
- In addition we saw a split from axis vs allies (imho the main goal was to push the abysmal low win rates of US and USSR teams) and the measures like 16 vs 16 and plain stupid map design.
- And as humans tend to follow easy paths the majority of the players became PvE players - as long as they gain a net profit with bombing a base and get killed immediately after the drop - they were happy.
- So if there is no need to improve - why should they be interested to learn to fly. Therefore i see your wording “low skill” extremely critical.
- In total opposition to PvE actions - a hell of Air TTs were filled with aircraft which enforced you to improve - as you needed 2-3 kills to compensate you own repair cost. So totally different incentives for PvP players.
Again - i would not call the small rest of players actually interested in aerial warfare (no matter of PvP or PvE oriented) high skill players - Air RB is rather easy for the majority to learn - and even my favorite cc on yt (DEFYN) uses mouse aim and instructor.
The lack of incentives to improve due to rather high benefits for useless actions within a match is fully intended by gaijin to earn money with them. What these “non-pilots” refuse to acknowledge is that they get ripped by gaijin as they follow their illusion that they can influence anything with their participation.
I watch daily my replays of tight matches - and it is amazing to see how many kills noobs can score. All they have to do is to find other players with even less experience and force headons in infinite loops.
Some years ago you needed actual skill to play prop Air RB around 5.0-6.0 - even the US teams had excellent pilots able to play around the weaknesses of their aircraft in the wt meta.
But these days you see the mode hijacked by the guys described above.
So i laughed out loud when i saw a request to balance towards the majority. It is the same like lowering recruiting standards for Armed Forces - it simply weakens the combat effectiveness in a battle - and in wt it prevents the need to improve.
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What would happen if the format of AB is copied, without speed boost, dom maps, aiming markers, in air reloads etc. plus a spawn point system perhaps?
I doubt that would go over very well because rewards would have to drop significantly. I would be willing to sacrifice rewards that come with a single spawn game mode for more involved gameplay. I think respawns, done correctly, could make the mode a bit more dynamic and interesting alongside actual objective based modes.
Air RB is just stale because almost every game is either fly to base, bomb base, fly to airfield or choose altitude (different for prop/jets), fly to targets, engage in combat, return to rearm/repair or find new target. There is not really any more gameplay loops other than that.
Which EC would solve in simple way.
In Sim EC you can:
Hunt AI planes
Hunt players in fighters or bombers
Do ground pounding
Go for bases
Go for airfields (and that can remove spawn location for enemy team)
Hunt a carrier (done that with A6E Tram, my sole mission was to fly high, find a carrier which spawns in random point at the map and sink it with laser bombs)
Go fight over cap zone that spawns at random
All this have actual impact on the game. Stripping tickets of enemy team.
Sure there are boring moments in there where you just flying or looking for targets, but that is also a part of it and why it works. In all creative mediums there is a concept of tension and release. You will find it in music, films, games (especially horror) where you will have low key moments followed by high moments that fall off and again spike up. Boring parts are contrast to high parts making them far more impactful.
This is also why Air RB is so dull. Every game it is high tension. Really it is just fundamental psychology. Even in Helldivers 2 you will have moments where you are just running. Have 5 minute firefight and back to running.
Yeah nobody complains about that because it works.
Air Sim is quite the dull gamemode. I’ve played sim a bit, and even at top tier it is just boring. I’ve had entire games in my Tornado where I saw noone. The games in my F-14-16s have been waiting for an enemy radar blip and the firing a SARH at them and a few seconds later, pop. Granted it isn’t 16v16 all the time, but it seems to me that it would be too few people in to large of a space. The RB EC maps seem smaller (not 100 percent on that) and they can be a chore when it comes down to the last couple people in a game. Respawns would help, but I’d perfer Air RB to not be a massive chore to play. I agree that breaks in action are good, but if I wanted a flight simulator with no action I’d play MFS.
Yeah, at a basic level map design and objectives exist to ensure players encounter other players.
Top tier sim need heavly guarded AWACs flying around.
Not only it would add another objective to take it out that would render enemy team blind but it would remove problem you just described where you would look for target for minutes.
They also have no interest in learning how to play tanks as well. They’re the people veterans tankers complain about driving straight down the middle of the map. Also known as casual’s.
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Lol - the best comment i read today.
Have a good one!
I agree, very boring and frustrating, we certainly need better maps and of a better variety with objectives, not just some bs slapped bang in the centre.
Bringing back some of the OG maps would be so awesome and make me love air rb again.
There were some really good ones.
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You don’t have to play for the entire duration - you can just do one sortie and leave due to how the room system works, which will be shorter than the average Air RB match. The mouse aim gunners are bullshit yes (and a regular complaint in the… rather small sim community), but this wouldn’t be a problem in an RB EC mode.
There’s also the autoflaring scripts and spectator mode abusers! The latter simply cannot be fixed unless they remove spectator mode. Luckily they’re a small minority and usually only from a certain region.
For pure fighters, yes. In EC most attackers have a pretty good time too just by virtue of map size, though you still want a fighter escort ideally.
I don’t see a way to outright exclude a significant part of the playerbase from Air RB.
Just a temporary break. I’ve moved my setup to another room and I haven’t quite set up everything again. Still figuring out where I can put all my things in places that make sense. And laziness. And finishing (some of) my scale models. I’ll get around to it eventually.
Mhm - i am fully aware of that - but i don’t play any games just for the sake of dropping something somewhere on a map - i want to win and influence the outcome. That’s why Air SB is nothing for me - as soon as a win get’s almost impossible almost all on the losing side leave, you can’t change the outcome due to this…
Good luck with your projects and have a good time!
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