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 !
It’s absolute hell sitting in the lobby and waiting for 2 enemies to finally start the battle. we often wait 40 minutes or more. only to fail.
sorry but I must clearly disagree!
we don’t need a few crowded rooms. we need more rooms. a larger selection of rooms for more flexibility. the sim community will never grow if there are only a few crowded rooms and the rest are away or are sitting in the lobby trying to start a battle.
that sounds good. no objections
For me, it would be perfect start just to fix the server lobby to show the real number of players. There are so many servers almost full in the lobby but when you get inside there are only a few or none - empty server is not fun in sim.
Also fix the nations ratio to be more realistic and more sim like, now we have all the nations fighting in one game. Split them in a few please, don’t throw them all inside one lobby.
Very quick one - bring back the events please.
Those are called ghost lobbies,it’s a bug Gaijin ignores for sim lobbies for ages .Those players that are greyed out are actualy playing on another instanced lobby.You have to wait for Gaijin to give 2 pennies about sim,so about 10 years.
As indicated by the old SIM players (who shared their detailed thoughts in the old forum), they were tons of topics where we discussed how Gaijin can improve SIM.
The main reason why I like WT Air-SIM is simply because of its “sim-but-not-quite formula” (indicated by frank william). And as an only console player (PS5) it is actually the only Air-SIM option for me.
The additions that I expect and want as a console player will be:
Working HUD’s first, please. = )
I’ve experienced the joy of joining servers expecting it to be quite full and finding 3-4 alive people with the rest of the lobby empty/names greyed out. What I would love to see gaijin do is run a few semi-historical ECs like Dover map or Vietnam map for different eras of planes. Have it ongoing and rotate every day or so to a different map/lineup.
Would be really nice to join a match that was more than 4 active players in it.
Transport aircraft have worked in - and indeed been a vital part of - previous MMO air combat sims. Eg, WarBirds: when you destroyed an object on an airfield - AAA, hangar, radar etc - it would stay destroyed for 15 minutes; once all objects were destroyed your team would capture the airfield once 5(?) paras entered the control tower. The Ju 52 could carry 8 paras and was the only transport, so was available to all sides. Capturing airfields was how you progressed the war. It was good fun and rewarded good timing/co-ordination between bombers/attackers and the Ju 52 pilot(s).
Not so sure how transport aircraft would fit into the 15-minute death match modes, so, although they could potentially have numerous uses in EC, I’m not sure Gaijin have ever considered them.
You make a good point, but if they cruised at like m0.75 at 30,000 feet, possibly carrying some radar jamming pod and obviously a boatload of flares I think it’s doable to defend it at up to 11.0 BR at least.
That is a lot to ask from gaijin though so I don’t think it would be ready in one update, possibly a long term goal though
