I’m aware, but that doesn’t help them if we fail to provide the details. It’s no different from playing a new game mode and telling developers, “It sucks!”. How do you expect anyone to make changes based on that feedback?
If you lack any details, it makes their job much harder and more likely. It will be placed in a backlog and forgotten due to development schedules, or the task ticket listed a closed due to lack of information to reproduce the problem.
The bugs were named and discussed often enough. (wrong and not working AI planes, AAA, open canopy, huge blue arrows on the map, transparent planes, etc. etc).
I will not make a complete bug list here. Thats the developers job. They know the details.
Balance is a difficult thing, I know. And there will never be a 100% perfect setup.
But some planes BRs are obviously wrong. The chinese F-86F-40 for example. Why is it at 8.3? Typo?
It has Sidewinders btw… Even the US who build the damn thing don´t have it before 9.0 or 9.3.
On the other hand you have planes that have so high BRs that you never see them in a match.
To create a list with all the things that are currently bad in EC Sim is indeed too time-consuming. Therefore I write only what I wish for EC Sim. (This is just my opinion, of course I don’t speak for everyone).
So I wish the following EC Sim improvements:
Return to the old reward system. Remove Usefull Action forever.
Improved possibilities to create user created battles. So that we don’t have to sit in the lobby for hours until the battle finally starts. One player per team should be enough to start the battle.
Re-introduction of the AI placeholder planes (Hans, Pete, Frank, Tony, Horst…) in user created battles.
Well programmed and well functioning AI units. Challenging but no suicide, no AI laser cannons aming.
Increase in the number of official rooms
Improvement of the nation battle setups. One of the points that is most important to me!
Official rooms with given defaults:
WW2
Allies vs. Axis on WW2 maps with WW2 planes.
Cold War
Democratic States (NATO) vs. Dictatorships (Rus and China).
On larger Cold War maps with jet aircraft.
User created setups with the possibility to create setups again by yourself.
Adapt Tech trees to Sim. (Tawian since 1949 to USA. DDR to Russia…)
Placeholder AI to match the setups.
And more things. But these would be already important improvements
I’m personally not a fan of having AI flying around unless they are a part of a clear objective/purpose, like bombers or surveillance planes (Both of which need to be greatly improved on). Nothing worse than getting a frag in a video game and it turns out it wasn’t an actual player you were fighting, ruins the immersion.
I think if they just give sim some love and a good rework we won’t be having this issue with the lack of players.
yes today the AI fighters are important when you have only one enemy in the room.
Sure, but I think it’s more important to focus on the larger picture so we get this big rework in, which will solve the issue in question - instead of settling for a bad compromise which will hurt the game mode in the long run if it still exists.
I really don’t see an issue with getting progression from AI kills. Whether it’s AI or a player, progression is progression. What ruins the immersion for me, is wasting my time and not having any targets to destroy.
The problem here is, that a lot of newer players don’t have the context of the old forums. There we have already discussed and pointed out everything that’s wrong in AirSim… and it has been thoroughly ignored.
All those good changes that came out of the Steam Review disaster are at best collateral improvements because the ones who revolted was the RB community that makes up 90% of the playerbase.
We have asked Gaijin time and time again to improve it giving detailed feedback and nothing has ever come of it.
When they introduced “Useful Actions” (2021), everyone told them it was a very bad idea. Even when it was in Beta they were told as much. After that I saw 90% of my wingmen leave WT for other Sims like IL2 BOS or DCS (which I refuse to do bc I’m stubborn af).
They’ve been told repeatedly what a gold mine SB is, and they keep piling on dirt on it instead of extracting it from the ground (sry for the metaphor).
It’s because of this that many of us Veterans are tired of repeating everything and it’s quite difficult for me personally nowadays to write anything about this w/o calling them names.
So yeah… that’s my 2 cents. I’m not saying we should stop trying, but please be understanding of the people that don’t want to give detailed feedback anymore.
please specify what you mean by that.
It is important to understand that even small changes can have a big impact on a game mode.
For example, when the SP was removed, it was obviously a small change. In fact, this change turned the whole mode upside down. there are many other examples.
I personally didn‘t dislike the removal of SP. It was kind of frustrating to be shot down in a higher tier plane and having to fly something else for 30min.
But the change from repair costs to spawn cost was at the very least stupid. As in whoever came up with that is an idiot.
It’s only an example that small changes can have a big impact - positive or negative.
I didn’t put timer and SP in my wish list above - because I knew everyone would jump on them straight away.
SP was actually an important and proven element of EC for many years.
The solution in my opinion would have been to reduce Timer to 10 or 15 min. or to reduce SP from max 450 to 200.
The complete removal of timer or SP led to the fact that at 3.7-4.7 all immediately fly only 4.7. Also the rotation has shifted the problem to 2 days each. Unfortunately, after 2 years we got used to it and forgot that SP was better.
But I didn’t want to have a discussion about SP but rather express my wishes.
I think having AI flying around (Not counting obvious objective-based ones like surveillance planes) ruins the immersion of the game-mode, no-one wants to fight some AI fighter over a real player, it’s a bad and lazy compromise to an issue (low player count/retention)which is only a problem in the first place because of these various problems sim has, problems we’re suggesting fixes to in this post, the larger picture. Some of these problems sim has that I’m referring to is based on enduring confrontations as a whole (inadequate and non-engaging mission objectives) - but also based on the player side - stuff like bad default controls setups, low rewards (useful actions) and so on.
Sim is suffering, but that doesn’t mean we should put bots in place of real players.
As for SP, I’m personally not a fan of anything that forces you to wait on a damn timer to play the game, or even limit what plane you get to fly. Hell no. And spawn costs have been greatly reduced since the economy update.
I actually quite like the BR rotation as it is. The only thing that gets a bit annoying is how 11.3 planes in particular only gets 2 days out of 8 when it’s not facing 12.3, but this will likely get solved when 12.7 and 13.0 get’s introduced. (I’m guessing you’re familiar with the BR rotation table).
The bots are only placeholders. but they are important. if five team members pounce on the AI Recon in user created battles, this means that there are too few targets.
Yes I am familiar with the rotation. The rotation was introduced only as an emergency solution because EC was naked without SP. from the deletion of SP, everyone flew only his stupid top-Br-plane in a battle. before, EC had required more tactical thinking.
I so agree with the points being made here, and am also hopeful that the Snail realizes how much of a goldmine this can be.
@Octavia038 for awareness and contribution.
I don’t have much trouble finding at least 1-2 decently filled games in sim, unless I’m playing during a very very odd hour during a weekday. It was worse a few months ago though!
I feel like I’ve already made my point regarding the placeholder thing. No-one likes fighting AI - even now when we see AI fighter groups, most people I know disengage as soon as they realise it’s not a real person. It doesn’t feel genuine or rewarding. We honestly don’t need a large portion of the total player base (80-200k active players at any given time!) to have enough of a player base in sim to keep lobbies consistently topped up. Filling up lobbies with bots only compromises the game mode as a whole IMO.
You only need 2 players on each team to start a sim game, that’s honestly not that much. If you can’t fill that up without a bunch of bots, what’s the point? Join another ongoing battle and help fill that up instead (writing this regarding to your 2nd point in your first post).
Maybe it’s actually a good thing since it makes sure we don’t have 20 active battles running at any given time with only 1-3 players in each, spreading the already thin player base out.
Keep in mind, I only play 8.7BR air and up, so I’m not familiar with the player count at lower BR’s
There are also some BR’s that struggle with balancing players, like 12.0 - After the F16 got it’s buff and the Mig29 got it’s FM nerf in the latest update - I would very frequently see games where the American side of the team is always topped up, meanwhile the USSR side struggles to maintain even a few players - In this case making it very hard as an American player to join a game as a good majority of them won’t let you join because there are too few people on the enemy team. I’d select my Netz and only find 1 or 2 (already kinda unbalanced) lobbies that I can join, however when I switch to the Mig29 the list fills up with 8-10 active battles I can join.
There are endless ideas of how to improve sim and make it more engaging, even when you can’t find people to fight at that very moment, just overall making it more engaging and give more substance to player actions for the outcome of the match. This along with making the entry barrier easier - through adding better default controls setups will solve the player retention problem.
-Give ground attackers more fun things to do than bombing a stationary tank or base that’s just gonna respawn before they even get back to base. Maybe add some ammunition depots as a fun thing that makes a huge explosion when you blow them up.
-Give surveillance planes a function, like exposing nearby planes to the enemy team through giving away rough locations as air alerts.
-Make the bomber formations a player activated event, on the runway you get the option to start a side mission where you will take off together with a number of bombers and you have to escort them to their target
-Add the ability for people to join “squads” mid game where they can VC with players - similar to early battlefield games. This will MASSIVELY improve the entry barrier for new players as it allows better communication, people in sim are generally nice and helpful to anyone trying to figure stuff out.
-More dynamic missions, Like LeoNerdo pointed out earlier-
“Destroy bridge”, this could possibly stop a convoy in its tracks?
“Destroying radar stations” that gives out plane locations in a radius around it,
“Destroy cargo planes” maybe they replenish tickets for the enemy team? Not only making it a high value target, but also a high value asset to protect/escort for the other team - allowing for fun engagements.
“Recon Missions” A mission where you bring out your plane photograph large sections of land at a very high altitude, then RTB to have the “film processed” which will reveal targets you can destroy, like radar stations. I’ve seen something similar in DCS.
“Add road bases” that planes can land on and rearm, similar to carriers where only capable planes can utilise it (in the case of road-bases - the Viggen, Draken and Gripen, I’m sure there are others as well.)
Y all are wasting internet on these sugestions,Gaijin dose not give a f.They only reacted with positive change when the income was majorly threatened by the steam bombings pr disaster,otherwise they would have continued to f the economy up so they can milk more non stop.Factually and literally .They will copy paste some more subtrees,release some 70$ planes and ships and continue buisness as usual.Have a nice day !
