Ah, you’re wrong about one thing here !
Bombers have been limited to 4 per team for a while. I think it’s been the case since at least 2016. This is what breaks the matchmaking specifically, and this is why I call a hardcap on strike fighters and fighters a bad idea.
Wyvern, XP-50s, etc. Are attackers with no limitation whatsoever. The problem with the Ju288 is specifically that it’s a bomber, and the matchmaker has a hard cap that limit their number per game. So to accomodate the overflowing numbers of Ju288, the game decide to create small team to dilute them over a larger number of matches.
The bombers limits has been introduced because the B-17, B-24 and Tu-4 spam (and before that it was the Yer-2 and the G8N as well) kept breaking air RB with 1200 meters laser gunners, high bomb load and the ability to end a match instantly by destroying base then bombing the airfield. It got so bad that the meta for Air RB at some point if you played germany was to spawn in a Me410 B6/R3 which got an airspawn and 30mm Mk103 guns. If you didn’t have at least 2 or 3 Me410 you would lose the game.
You can say that part again… They also have no problem with throwing away all their altitude to chase one bomber or attacker at low altitude, which is often a bot.
Maybe with time and smaller team sizes this would change.
Well, gaijin can’t expect to get something out of nothing, right? They spend tens of thousands in outsourcing vehicle models, some gamemode tweaking isn’t beyond them.
Of course, I said at the start of my comment that my list of suggestions only applies to prop tiers - I don’t enjoy jets that much and spend considerably more time flying those outdated contraptions.
I think the team size reduction would still benefit missile thunder very much, however.
Frontline Mozdok has issues with anything airspawned having a MASSIVE advantage. It’s no secret and it’s been like that for years.
Kinda, but maps already have a lot of playable space ‘outside’ of the map border that isn’t normally shown. Better performance at high alt would be compensated for by some planes getting interceptor air spawns, thus still allowing them to get nice and high despite being closer to the enemy.
I find that smaller maps only end up closer to the enemy AF when the match is already imbalanced, and that happens easily when you have 32 players ready to throw themselves at the enemy and start the snowball effect.
This is just a problem with current balancing. The B7A2 only gets a bomber spawn because it is a torpedo and dive bomber, it could easily get a lower frontline bomber or even attacker spawn instead. The Yak3 would move up in BR (as it should already, that thing does not belong at 4.3) - and the XP50 should have had its airspawn removed years ago, or be moved up in BR.
Fortunately for XP50 players, they just suck at the game so it stays there.
The F6F-5N is a little overtiered, probably due to its better firepower, much like the F4U-1C is. Again, smaller team sizes putting a greater emphasis on flight performance will likely help.
Also for whatever’s worth, I’d take a Bf 110 C against those lol, “nah I’d win” is in full effect there
I haven’t had this happen in the many Pacific ARB matches I’ve been lucky enough to encounter. Since there’s less enemy players, you never have to pull them away for so long or so far to get an even fight. You also don’t have to worry about surprise 3rd parties as much.
Lower player counts also makes coordinating with teammates easier, which is something I basically never see outside of late game scenarios with just a few players per side.
This is to ensure that one side isn’t stuck with 4 bombers, an attacker, and just one fighter (6.0 germany) while the other gets a full complement of fighters. Such matches are neither balanced nor enjoyable for either side.
At top tier it falls apart because every plane does everything, but this isn’t relevant there anyway.
Don’t forget, last BR adjustment the A6M5 Ko from the old Pacific Pack is now 5.3! One more BR jump and it’ll be considered just as good as the F4U-4B.
Hmh - i strongly disagree with your assessment of the B7A2, but ifully agree that balancing is imho the key to many issues.
The B7A2 was a multi-role aircraft for torpedo, dive and level bombing - u see the window for the bomb sight below the gunner/bombardier, so the bomber spawn is justified as 9 x 60 kg kills a base even in a full uptier to 4.7.
Regarding the spawn alt - its the same as a tactical bomber; 3.500 above ground whilst strategic bombers have 4.500 meters.
But your overall logic applies imho to a lot of other aircraft - and the correct spawn classification is just the tip of the iceberg.
Look at useless (irl) planes like SB2Cs, also tactical bomber spawn - no bomb sight. Without alt advantage helpless.
Or the Brigand - misused as bomber hunter whilst having a bomber spawn without having a bomb sight.
Or the T-18B 57mm - specifically developed as ground attack version of the B-18B- with 400kg bomb load. - imho a clear need for.classification as strike aircraft…
Or stuff like P-61 or F-82 - never designed as interceptor…whilst actual interceptors like 109 Z or a hell of JP planes have airfield spawn.
The list is endless…
I theory - maybe.
I talk about stuff like my SM 92s, i fear nobody above 7km (ok for some planes i take 9) - and if you look at a map like Poland and if you spawn from the south you often get overwhelmed by incoming air spawn planes - you can’t evade them as the map ends after the airfield. Air spawn for stuff like P-47s - we had this 6 years ago. You know what happened.
In other words i need time and space to make my plane work - so you have to climb outside the 10 km spotting distance and get above contrail alt when you gap is much larger. Even today i have to reverse climb at full uptiers in order to gain positioning on most very small / smaller maps.
You might argue - just fly another plane then. And you would be right, but them i would fly the same meta stuff like the others and leverage even more my experience advantage vs on average far less experienced players. I fly Air RB not to increase kill numbers (ok when i started this was the case) - i like the challenge - and i see no challenge in clubbing tankers with meta planes.
Despite the fact that you can’t select the SA server anymore (which offered, depending on daytime, 30-40% of my matches on the 4 main maps - Peliu is very rare) you underestimate the effect of the air spawn for US/UK fighters.
The airspawn for all enemy fighters nullifies together with the large distances like on Iwo Jima or Saipan your airspawn advantage even vs 3.7 P-51Cs and the 4.3 Spit without considering stuff like P-38s or XP-50s.
So your are forced to play extremely aggressive or to hide in the mist on these maps 50 meters below the contrail alt (6.400m) - this mist strongly reduces spotting distances from 10 to 4-6 km.
And i talk not about the start of the match - i talk about those matches when you play with 2 other B7A2s, a H8K3 and 2 Zeroes vs 3 Wyverns, 2 BR 4.3 Spits and an US interceptor. Usually the Wyverns spray my rookie team down and i have the 2 Spits at my six until my ticket run out.
And actually - a lot of matches end in ticket defeats for JP as the last US/UK player knows about auto wins on 3 of the 5 active maps - an example in this thread.
Main issue here:
US teams can win on some Pacific maps with doing nothing.
Do i think it was correct from the US player to play the auto-win card?
Yes (ok, maybe with a very holistic view) and no.
Yes (in case you really search for something positive here), he might have won and generated victory SL/RP bonuses for his team.
No, because a map that requires nothing but running/spaceclimbing to win a match with 0 points is a slap in the face of pilots actually trying to win by fighting vs players or environment.
Detailed view
This map is like Saipan an auto-ticket win for US teams after 15 to 25 minutes. The JP team has zero chance to prevent enemy ai units to capture A point (Iwo Jima) or A and B point (Saipan). Experienced US players are aware of this. After countless ticket defeats on these 2 maps i check now every match there the enemy lobby for highly experienced US players - and like in this example i found one.
Without preemptive climbing to 7 km and activating blind hunt at the right point in time i would have not been able to find him on this excessively large map. Without further climbing to 8 km i would have not been able to attack a 46 km away flying PV-2D bomber with aced 0.50 cal ai gunners with the necessary altitude advantage which forced him to dive and turn.
A standard player in an A6M2 would have lost this match because the PV-2D is quite fast and he would have been unable to catch him in time - so the bomber pilot would have won the match with 0 points and 0 activity…
So it is gaijin that prevents “fair game play” due to unbalanced maps.
Even if they argue you might have a 50/50 chance to be affected by bad map design - the semi-historical MM on Pacific maps is a clear example why such designs affect mainly JP pilots. Even if there is no spaceclimbing US bomber - a lot of Wyvern pilots run all over the map and they are simply too fast to catch.
Mate - i have no clue what you are talking about in the next block:
You claimed:
Which i support in general, but i used an example of match from today that this would mean that in this case the Il-8s had to be allocated to both teams to “bring balance to the force” - joke aside to ensure that both team have the same number of slots:
And from my perspective your answer is not dealing with my point that in this case a slot allocation based on classes would have resulted in a USSR vs USSR lobby aka as mixed battle which happens in prop BRs only when a squad with multiple nations participate.
Your reference to top tier is imho not valid as not the roles are decisive, the fact that you fight identical planes from identical nations is annoying for a lot of players - and specially mentioned within the OP.
I mean i flew a few times vs very experienced players in the same plane - a nightmare if you meet on similar energy and alt.
I am sure about that i am wrong about much more :-)
Imho i was just not precise enough with my example.
I wrote:
I should have written:
Nowhere else you see such small lobbies combined with a historical MM. If your theory would be correct, we would not have to wait up to 4 minutes to see up to 10 Wyverns, 5 XP-50s or currently 8 Il-8s in 16 vs 16 matches early morning or late night.
The MM would shorten the queue times after the minimum lobby 6 vs 6 is full - and he would start a match- without sticking to the historical MM.
I hope this make my pov clearer - so if shortening queue times would be a valid explanation for the 288 phenomenon we would see way more very small matches with other highly popular planes without the historical MM.
But somehow the historical MM is only active at these small lobbies (and also at lower BRs) even if there are no German bombers involved. So just by “killing” the historical MM we would see 2 UK Spits (or Ki-84s or Yak-3Us) and 4 Ju 288s vs 6 US fighters. This will never happen, i outlined the “real” reasons - or at least my assumptions and subsequent conclusions to that.
I know the history of the 4 bomber slots and met legends like fmt3 those days in his B-29 with 10.000+ kills in it. And i scored my highest kill ever in a Fw 190 D-13 at 10.600 meters with a 90 degree climb stall shot 5-700 meters above me :-)
It’s a single engine bomber that can tango with fighters to a limited degree (and is arguably the role it is most used in). It doesn’t need an airspawn that high.
I agree that what gets and doesn’t get an airspawn is a long and confusing list.
I wasn’t around then, but they were very strong. I propose to just move them up, now that they could get altitude more easily. Smaller maps would also make that airspawn not as significant as it would be right now.
I never do this, even in my twin engine planes (that I rarely fly because they all tend to be shit in one way or another). By the time i’m that high up, at least half my team is dead. Only the Bf110 C and J5N have gotten much attention from me, and both can climb about as well as most single engines.
Early game matters too much for me to leave my team to their own devices for that long.
I’m gonna be real, I’ve never really struggled in any of them as Japan. Countering US/UK props is piss easy and I don’t have to run for half the match to do so. Ki-43-1, Ki-61, Ki84, Ki100, A7M2, J2M3, A6M3, you name it, I can get ace in a game with any, the enemy doesn’t concern me in the slightest. Bet even in the N1K2s I could do it, and those are about 250kg too heavy than they should.
If I die its because I made a mistake I shouldn’t have, especially now that japanese guns work again.
No, just that those IL8 players are gonna have to wait a little longer for the matchmaker to find more enemy attackers to put them up against. I have very rarely seen a match with Ju288s on both sides and I’ve played… too much 6.0 germany air, to be honest. There’s a lot of 288s but the vast, vast majority of matches are them against another nation.
For what its worth, you could also make bombers and attackers cpunt towards the same ‘pool’ as their primary role will be PvE.
FOX-3 missiles will eventually come, and when they do, Air RB will be inevitably reworked. There’s just no way they introduce FOX-3 missiles without at least reducing team sizes.
Besides what I mentioned earlier, matchmaking is also a serious problem. Not so much in BR spread but rather that it allows non-fighters to fill up slots for fighters in the first place.
Since every nation has a decent mix of fighters, attackers, and bombers these days, would it be all that difficult to have the matchmaker have preset “fighter” and “not fighter” slots? Ideally 10 fighters and 6 non-fighters.
Solving the issues of airspawn abuser bombers like the Helldiver is simple - make them designated as Attackers instead. With their pitiful engine performance relative to fighters at the same BR, they will quickly fade into irrelevance. Any “bomber” with significant forward firepower should be classed as an Attacker instead. This means things like Tu-2s, B-25s, PV-2Ds, T18B-1/2s, possibly even Pe-2s but that’s pushing things since a single 12.7 and a single 7.62 isn’t exactly much.
A discussion is based on the willingness to understand other people. The goal is not to prove who is right or wrong because opinions (in opposition to faith) are based on facts and depend from individual perspective - in a best case you encourage others to reflect their position.
But for this mutual respect is essential. And mutual respect is shown if you read carefully deviating opinions - there is no need to defend your position as your initial statement is your opinion. Full stop.
So if you claim that some things need to change - i am with you. But in case when others have a deviating views on your ideas there is no need to create infinite loops and to shift goalposts just to circumvent or cover the flaws in your ideas.
Imho any proposals to improve Air RB should include a holistic and balanced view on the game itself and should be an improvement for all players of all plane classes.
So even this is just a theoretical exercise, any rework should be balanced to satisfy all involved parties. My opinion about your ideas:
Some of your ideas are good and more or less the same like hundreds of other posts in the recent years, and others not.
And not because they are bad, mainly as some of your ideas are simply just not precisely defined, contradict each other or mainly they are not balanced for all plane classes.
The passion of flying is not exclusively connected to fly single engine fighters and we have a lot of passionate pilots loving other plane classes, mainly bombers and heavy fighters.
So even you presented your idea how the game could be better - your pov is clearly fighter oriented - we have this currently in Air RB - called TDM.
So all of your ideas sound balanced, but a closer look showed that they are not really an improvement for non-fighter classes.
And this is comprehensible as you have neither the necessary experience as strike/heavy fighter nor as bomber pilot to assess the complex connection between map size & design, target locations and distance to them and necessary circumstances to make non-single fighters effective and fun to play.
If you see fellow players as food, this is fine - wt is at the end of the day a shooter and from a holistic pov there is nothing wrong with thinking this way. But i have serious issues if you ignore examples which were solely aimed to widen your view to see the broader picture.
I mean you admit that your heavy fighter experience is rather limited and after visiting Thunderskill i understand why you think that your smaller map proposal would be good for bombers too - you have imho zero experience in them, that’s why you fail to understand that it won’t work.
I tried my best to show you that your proposal “smaller maps” sounds good in theory, but is actually rather counterproductive for bombers and heavy fighters - and i used one small map (regarding distances between airfields), Frontline Mozdok, as example and connected this with your second (imho) critical proposal slots equally distributed by teams to show you the weak points of your thoughts, not more, not less.
Frontline Mozdok is imho near to that what you described - small distances, ground targets not in the middle of the map etc.
Small map Mozdok with your ideas
So imagine a 8 vs 8 with 3 strategic bombers, 2 attackers and 3 fighters per side. Team A comes with 3 Sterlings 2 Wyvens and 3 Chinese P-38s, Team B with 3 B-17s, 2 Do 335s and 3 P-38s. The Sterlings will never get near a base before the B-17 are in gun range, the 335s and the Wyvern kill each other in headons and even if one B-17 get killed by the 3 Sterlings there is simply no improvement for the Sterlings compared to today.
The different combat capabilities of different aircraft within the same class and identical or similar BRs makes this whole topic extremely complex.
Every successful heavy bomber pilot will tell you that he has to be smarter than the average fighter pilot in order to have a chance to drop and to rtb. If your proposal of close ranges to bases would be reality - after one week nobody would fly a “real” bomber as all bomber pilots would have to switch to stuff like T-18Bs, Tu-2s, Brigands or B7A2s as they would have otherwise no realistic chance for a drop in anything else.
Same with heavy fighters, they need room to be effective and on smaller maps they would have the same issue as bombers - their dots are visible right after spawn.
In order to end this imho just at the beginnin rather interesting discussion i decided to reply a last time in this matter to you. It is frankly spoken rather annoying to continue with a discussion when i got confronted with permanent shifting of goalposts and ignoring of deviating views.
In the OP is mentioned that ideas can be presented - and ideas might be discussed. So if i reply to 2 ideas (small maps & slot allocation) and gave you clear signs why that might be a not an improvement it makes zero sense to start discussions about BRs, usage of certain planes or you opinion about air spawns, their altitude or if they deserve that or not .
Because from a pure logical point you have just 2 ways to deal with your idea of small maps:
You define a combat scenario including a map and adjust all aircraft regarding classification, actual combat effectiveness vs current BRs, air spawn, time to target and best way to give them a purposeful game play in order to contribute
or
You come from the aircraft performance on average and adjust game play (maps and objectives) based on current performance and try to improve their game play and the fun whilst using them with minor adjustments to aircraft settings like BRs, classification, air spawn or not.
Every other approach will kill the idea as you get overwhelmed by the underlying complexity.
If you choose path #1 it is pointless to reply to every counter argument like:
“Do this, do that” or “I have no problems with that” or “adjust this parameter” and so on an so forth as this should have been considered upfront - and the discussion drifts away from the core as you get lost in details.
Have a good one!
I decided to out put a spoiler to my feedback to your last post as your reply was imho not really suited to improve prop Air RB.
Summary
Imho it can deal with almost every fighter and it was even in my 2.247 matches in the TT version the perfect weapon to fight XP-50 and Yak-3 spam.
What a plane needs and what it gets are different topics and your assessment is your private opinion.
With the same logic all interceptors with extreme good climb rates would need a lower airspawn.
And - a “real” interceptor should have sacrificed turn vs climb and armament - so by giving these planes an IC spawn even gaijin increases the gap vs non-airspawn fighters.
If i say i reverse climb on small maps in my SM 92 in a full uptier in order to have a chance for a good positioning it should be clear that there is a very strong connection between map sizes, distance to bases and combat effectiveness.
So even if you assess them as “shit in one way or another” does this not imply that others come to the same conclusions - if you check my stats in this plane you might realize that these can be played, it requires just more experience to make them work.
So if the distance to bases is too small you can’t get fast enough to altitude - if the distance is too great, you get outclimbed by fighters with airfield spawn.
Therefore your reply just proves that you assume that your way to play the game was the basis for your proposal - despite i wrote earlier that there is no challenge for me to fly single engine fighters - and imho also not for others if they have more than 10 days fighter experience as their experience advantage vs the average opponent is way too high.
And yes, besides a few exceptions twin engine fighters suck usually - that’s why i fly them.
This is nice for you but has the same confidential level as mine - purely anecdotal.
And tbh imho there is huge gap between anecdotal evidence and facts - and you can claim whatever you want, nobody cares.
Same here - nobody cares.
And the question is not how you perform
And frankly spoken your stats do no not confirm your self-assessment.
If you try to defend your initial positioning by rejecting other positions and not considering them as plain & simple feedback you missed the key part of any fruitful discussion - trying to understand deviating opinions and to reflect your own positioning.
Seeing your replies just as rather one-side declarations of your views, it makes for me no sense to continue, thx for understanding!
If we could agree, that we talk here just about prop BRs, i’d like to respond:
Your idea sounds comprehensible if you share the underlying assumption that there is a higher demand for fighters vs non fighters.
Imho this has to be seen as a BR related assumption and also seen in the context of BP tasks or grinding events.
After an actually rather painful experience to spade the IT/HUN Tu-2S-59 at BR 5.7 (31 missions 30% full uptiers, 30% full downtiers) i would actually rather not recommend to follow this path as from my perspective we have at certain BRs a much higher demand for grinders.
You see at 3.7 the current Il-8 spam, the 4.3 Wyvern spam just followed by a concentrations at 5.7 (Do 225 B-2 and corresponding AD2 & AD-4s) which clearly shows a demand.
A limitation of non-fighter slots would therefore face a rather stiff resistance despite i agree that it might be suited to improve the game play in general.
The need for limitations of slots is imho also connected to the actual use versus the intended use, so “banning” of non-fighters which are acting as fighters would be a relief for their enemies at some BRs, but those pilots able to contribute with PvP actions in non-fighters have to be seen rather as a benefit for their own team, so i am not sure this might be appreciated.
I don’t refer here to guys flying out op stuff like Wyverns, i saw a lot of skilled AD-4 and AM-1 pilots able to intercept Ju 288s before they could drop - and much more “designated” fighters dying to return fire…
Imho the higher you go, the less numbers of non-fighters you see. In my 6.7 uptiers i was often the sole bomber in my team, and the other side had often 4 bombers (Ju 288 & Ar 234) and 3-4 Do 335s, so the slot regulation is imho done by the game itself, but is strongly connected to their actual combat effectiveness.
But i fully agree there should be a kind of limit - as written in an earlier post it is sometimes pointless to play certain matches just by looking at your team composition and the played map.
I really like this idea.
But imho the effectiveness of “bomber” vs bomber is not only related to “significant forward firepower”.
Based on own experiences the forward firepower is just the most obvious aspect - a high performance bomber like a B-18B or a Ju 288 excels not with rather limited forward firepower (fixed 13.2 autocannon / MG 131 Z in chin turret) but with very strong turrets (13.2 / MG 151) - so backward firepower. So an experienced pilot intercepts an enemy bomber best by predicting his flight path and by “parking” in front of him - and spray him down.
Helldivers, T-18Bs and Brigands which excels with bomber kills could be tamed just by the role they were developed for.
If the bomber spawn is intended to allow bombers to kill a base, they need a bomb sight for level bombing - this takes the SB2C and the Brigand out.
The T-18B and the T-18B 57mm were specific attack versions of the B-18B - so classifying them as strike aircraft is more than justified.
Regarding all other aircraft you mentioned - imho hard to justify as long as they have a navigator/bombardier and were actually used as level bomber. I mean following your logic you would have to include the B-26 too.
If you consider that the more dakka approach on US bombers comes from their usage in low strafing runs after or whilst attacking as level bomber (and this is also valid for all other real bombers) i would recommend to focus on comprehensible reasons like missing bomb sight and intended role as strike aircraft.
A few additional remarks:
Following your overall logic, you might think about strike aircraft which perform extremely well as fighters.
Or plain nightfighters classified as interceptors like Do 217J or P-61s.
Or unjustified IC spawns for Fw 190As, F-82s, etc - or even such plain things like the rejection of the air spawn of the Navy’s pendent of the XP-50, the XF5F - accompanied by several JP interceptors without air spawn.
Or why is the air superiority spawn deviating from the IC spawn? Why has a single Ki-61 an air spawn and all others not?
It boils down that a hell of classifications are set by gaijin in their attempt to balance - together with BRs and “adjustments” of flight models, but these effects are rarely connected to irl events or actual combat performance.
The fundamental issue there is that you simply cannot please everyone.
Fighter players will always complain that a bomber or attacker is space climbing and delaying the end of the match. Attacker and bomber players will complain they can’t play purely PvE and never get intercepted by fighters ever.
I’ve been around for years, I’ve seen all this happen.
I don’t play bombers or attackers much because they provide zero actual gameplay. They’re cool aircraft and all but flying in a straight line and pressing spacebar a couple times isn’t for me and I don’t see how anyone can have fun doing so. Attackers are slightly more useful but you still rely on your opponent screwing up so that you don’t die instantly - this was hilariously the case somewhat recently when a Typhoon lost a dogfight to my Bf 110 G2, which is an overweight brick that preys on complacency.
I still question whether he was a paid actor or not.
Frontline Mozdok is just too small, you can easily see the enemy airfield right after taking off. That’s not what I want either. And besides, due to how high up the airspawns are you might be able to drop your bombs before being intercepted anyway…
The Great Heavy Fighter Rant
Spoiler
Heavy fighters just suck for the most part and are a terrible idea to fly, bar a few options. The main upside of extra range just isn’t relevant to WT, but all the tradeoffs in agility and speed are.
The only “heavy fighter” I’ve flown in an appreciable amount is the Bf 110 C, which can hold its own against single engine ones. Not as good as the 109 E4, but it’s good enough and nobody expects it to hang with them. Again, preying on complacency.
This is not something that can be argued - a plane whose primary role is shooting down other planes, that is slower and less maneuverable than the average single engine fighter at its BR is NOT a good aircraft. You can make it work by working harder than everyone else for the same result, sure, this doesn’t make them good.
I don’t think it’s a great idea to worsen the experience for everyone else because one unpopular plane type benefits slightly when what they really need is a BR reduction or an entirely separate gamemode - Air RB EC, where the increased endurance might actually matter. This also goes for attackeds and bombers, which see far more actual use in Sim EC because the gamemode encourages it with a much longer match timer and the inability to win by just killing 16 players.
People grind with premium attackers and bombers because it’s easy, not because they enjoy it. The F-5C is a fantastic fighter - how many have you seen strapped down with bombs? I’ve seen too many doing so. Even with the new F-20. A Wyvern squad can literally end the game on tickets in some maps before any of the fighter players spot the enemy team.
I ask people why they recommend the Ju288, the answer is always something along the lines of “it requires no effort to turn a profit”, as they help ruin the 6.0 ARB experience for everyone else.
Again, I don’t see a point in accomodating this type of player when they have singlehandedly ruined an entire BR range, at the very least. One could argue that Wyverns and XP50s ruined another.
The Stats
Spoiler
Yeah, some of my stats don’t look great. For starters, you can freely assume that 1/4 to 1/2 of my matches in any given aircraft are in Ground RB where not having markers and being able to sneak up on people is fantastic, but I also get slapped by AA I wasn’t careful with, or I uptier my aircraft a little too much, or I get caught out by someone who sneaked up on me, or something else.
Even in Air RB, I don’t play for the most kills. I will intentionally give my opponents altitude and speed advantages if it means they’ll actually fight me instead of floating 2km above, in front, or behind me for the entire match. I’ll give airfield campers the easiest times ever just so they crawl out of their hidey hole and play the game. I go after what I perceive to be the biggest threats instead of the easiest kills and I toy with my food. As one might surmise, this isn’t the most optimal way to play if I seeked only to flex with stats.
This is fine, as I seek cool fights and good times instead.
My suggestions address two of the major problems that the general community and myself have spotted - team imbalances caused by plane types (as in, 6.0 air rb) and too long a flight time to get into combat. It doesn’t have to be like arcade, but we can cut down on that a little for no degradation in gameplay, and I see both of these as issues that are very much worth addressing.
I’m not gonna back down on my suggestions just because they’re not perfect - issues can be fixed (rather easily when people are willing). The core of the matter is that 32 players in a match is too much, and if we’re reducing that we should also reduce map size. Attackers and bombers are simply unsuited for a mode with no respawns.
Imho we have just fundamentally different understanding what a rework should offer:
vs:
That’s all.
That 16 vs 16 is too much for Air RB is nothing new, it it is discussed since introduction.
That small map sizes might be a benefit for guys that look for more instant action - might be true. But that things like tactics, strategy or something like a game plan got lost in the last 3-4 years is a fact. And smaller maps are imho detrimental for strategic game play.
So i agree (ofc) to smaller lobbies, and disagree to smaller maps.
No big thing. There is no need for a consensus.
Have a good one!
To outline my understanding of a more challenging game play i use a map which was mentioned in a parallel thread.
…would give all plane classes (including non-fighters) a realistic chance to follow their intended roles is from my perspective clear.
Some pros and cons:
Yes - guys on speed grind tours won’t like it just due to the sheer size, same as min fuel spammers as you needed fuel here.
And yes, the map had some drawbacks - mainly caused by stupid spawn locations, but the map is large enough that even a Sterling or a Yer-2 have realistic chances to drop and rtb.
But this depends on his skills to choose the right route and right strategy. So as today, the guy flying straight to a base will get killed, the guy able to “read” a game, able to spot openings and able to spot dots (not markers) can evade spotting if gaijin finally fixes the way too low contrail alt - see bug report.
The 4 bases were non-respawning and the 2 airfields were “killable” - despite this happend almost never as you needed about 10-12 tons of TNT for each. A base required around 0.5 tons of TNT.
As a fighter you had all options: Going for bombers, escorting own bombers, defendind own CAS planes or going for enemy CAS or like many US pilots - max loadout and killing pillboxes, tanks or bases - or just looking for dogfights with enemy fighters, But you needed a strategy and you knew that going low will get you killed very quick as you get swarmed and your airfield was too far away.
As a summary:
The map forced you to think about what you are doing and was a pleasure to fight on if you had some experience. The map got less exiting after the cut to 25 minutes, but is was one of my favorites.
If you add stuff like more challenging target for friends of CAS (like described here) like slowing or stopping enemy ai by killing bridges (we had this also on Korea) it would be perfect…at least from my pov.
The main point with the matchmaker having distinct slots is to begin the long road to getting fighter mains and nonfighter mains off each other’s throats. I find the mutual hostility between these entrenched camps beyond silly at this point. If nonfighters existing on a team no longer means they are “taking up potential fighter slots,” that is one less reason for a fighter main to get mindlessly angry at “bot farmers” and “spacebar warriors” (quoting terminology from one of the most unbelievably selfish diehard fighter mains of the old forum, X_Broman_X) for simply existing.
After all, if the game was meant to be purely a fighter deathmatch, then why aren’t purebred bombers and attackers only AI-controlled? Because popularity issues aside, even in the Combined Arms modes a fighter-bomber is leagues better than a dedicated nonfighter due to better speed and often agility.
The issues of intentional gunshipping will always be an occasional nuisance. An He-177 tried to pull that xxxx on me, and I proceeded to pitch up and saw his wing off with the dual Hispano Mk. V turret on the Shackleton.
I personally think that only reward coercion can mostly curb various “abusive behavior” - intentional gunshipping, fighters cutting grass, airspawn abusing attackers and bombers, dedicated bomber interceptors abusing airspawns to bounce climbing fighters, etc. Where you pick a designated role for your plane before queuing, you gain large bonus rewards (say 5-10x more) for killing targets in your designated role, and you have greatly reduced rewards (say 5-10x less for killing targets outside your role. Intentionally too large a modifier to ignore unless you’re such a long-term veteran player that SL is meaningless.
And obviously there are many other planes which would fall under the example of “airspawn abusing bomber playing Ersatz Fighter,” I just listed popular examples. Of course the B-26 would count, even though its downward-angled guns make it quite ineffective at the job IMHO.
I like the underlying idea of connecting SL/RP income to fulfilling intended roles - but this would add another level of complexity, and imho punishments are way less effective that increasing rewards.
Your description of the eternal fight between fighters and bombers (at least in the community) is somehow correct, but imho not the issue. Gaijin itself nerfed and still nerfs bomber game play constantly - as they state " the ultimate goal of wt is to kill an enemy" or something like that when they introduced the (s)kill bonus.
The main problem of wt Air RB is the low entry level to participate (either by point and click by fighters or pressing spacebar in bombers) combined with the increasing numbers of non-pilots in it.
If you revisit the OP you might agree that almost all changes in the last 4 years were aimed to further reduce the necessity to learn & to improve - in other words the average Air RB player became less smart (polite) and the game play less challenging for already experienced pilots.
So ideas to avoid “abuses” of aircraft outside their intended roles are welcomed and appreciated but imho they just scratch on the surface of the underlying issue:
Gaijin tries everything to make skill less important and reduced the outcome of most matches to a random event - and the reduced skill requirements makes the game mode highly attractive for ever increasing numbers of non-pilots.
The reason Gaijin keeps nerfing bomber gameplay is partially because of fighter vs bomber animosity. Since fighter mains outnumber nonfighter mains, fighter whine ends up being the loudest collective voice, and thus gets listened to, leading to repeated gutting of every single bomber, bar none.
And yet if that is supposedly the ultimate goal, why do we even have player-controlled non-fighters at all? There is not one game mode where nonfighters are on equal footing in terms of objective relevance to fighters, save for maaaaybe some bombers in Sim EC purely because of arcadey 3rd person gunner view and how bombsight mechanics work. If aerial PvP was the only goal, we could have the exact same result without question if all bombers, attackers, and most bomber-killer-specialist heavy fighters were little more than AI-controlled set-pieces on maps.
Dedicated attackers and bombers aren’t any more relevant in Combined Arms modes, either. Fighter-bombers are faster and more agile, and thus can both defend themselves from fighters and dodge surface-to-air gun/missile fire more easily.
Indeed, and this is a travesty, to say the least.
That’s why both bonuses and maluses in tandem were the idea. Not just one, but two stacking incentives to do the job you’re queuing for, or you will earn basically nothing for your time inputted. Changing roles mid-match would be possible if some people have died and there are slots available, provided your plane can do that role.
From my pov average fighter pilots are just acting like the overwhelming majority of wt players if they face obstacles they can’t handle either because they are unwilling or unable to deal with them - they cry for mom & dad irl and in wt for gaijin. The better fighter pilots are aware of that “real” bombers are no threat - just the the noob unable to choose the right approach or unwilling to outclimb high performance bombers complain (ofc there are exceptions).
I do not believe that the majority of bomber nerfs are actually connected to the complaints of fighter pilots, maybe the open nerfs of ai gunners and the hidden nerfs with accuracy of manual gunners are related to that but imho gaijin is simply unable to balance bombers correctly regarding BR settings and game impact.
I mean the total number of playable aircraft is a valid point to see this kind of aircraft classes active in wt, but gaijin is not really a fan of bombers. Because with some pilot skill, they are actually a pain to kill. This depends of course on the selected model, weather specific circumstances like heavy clouds and the average IQ of the chasing fighters.
Example of being a pain to kill
3 or 4 months ago i played in my SM 92 a 2 vs 7 on the UK map, with me a Halifax and the guy wanted to land and rearm. I convinced him to climb and he reached 8.500 - 9.000 meters and i flew top cover (at 10-11 km). I flew the Halifax on my old account and knew that the plane is very fast at very high alt - the few P-38s and P-51s pitching up had severe issues to get even on co-alt and in gun range. A few short dives on them and they had to go down - ofc we won by tickets. But without the extremely heavy clouds and without blocking their blind hunt orders long enough and buying him time to climb, i might have lost the Halifax.
Example of being a pain to kill II
If you watch this replay just focus on the enemy bomber, a PV-2D. He got almost teamkilled after spawn, repaired and killed all 3 non-respawning bases on Poland in a low level bomb run.
And he used the good speed of his plane at tree top to gun down my last 3 teammates (2 Yak 9s, 1 B-25) with help ftom his af aaa.
Checking his stats i saw a rather experienced fighter player (66days) but i also saw on his TNT dropped that he used sea mines to bomb the bases, which are totally useless vs tanks and pillboxes.
And instead of switching to GP bombs on his af he kept the mines. All i had to do was staying alive and just attack when he would kill a few pillboxes and avoid being hit by his upper turret - he attacked pillboxes with mines instead of his 0.50 cals, killed a few worthless aaa and lost.
There was no need to force an attack on a guy trying to gunship you whilst you are flying with a level 3 crew. And you see that a rather good fighter pilot is not automatically also a good bomber pilot.
And being a pain to kill means longer match times (which increases queue times) and an increased level of difficulty for the average player - both are not desired goals for gaijin.
Imho there is some truth in it, as from a holistic pov the sole purpose of the game is player interactions. And markers in Air RB for enemy and friendly bases or ground units are just gaijin’s way of “engagement optimized” map layout.
You could also argue that PvP activities are just implemented to create a kind of more realistic scenario than pure PvP. Or you might argue that PvE game play is just implemented to increase the number of available air targets for PvP players…
The main issue of PvE in a bomber is the effort you have to invest in a game to contribute to your team effort to win. If you exclude high performance stuff like B-18Bs or the very rare Tu-2 at 4.3 all bombers are killable, it just depends on the skill of your opponents. For “average bombers” above BR 3.7 it is hopeless to play Air RB…
And - if you had a long day and you need to calm down:
Use the Ju 88 A-1 for one or two relaxing matches - very effective with some experience (80% WR) in 144 matches. And i actually lost just 2 planes in these matches (one to buffed midfield aaa and one vs a pathetic stat padder with 177 days as fighter in rank I & II, there is nothing you can do vs a Jap 109 with 20mm) - just because i was able to avoid enemy fighters by reverse climbing. And the high win rate is a result of airfield kills - i came in very late and very high, usually the bomb load was enough to kill one base and the enemy af.
