All the issues regarding base bombing in air RB

Game Discussion Realistic Battle
1

In the recent times, there has been a massive influx of players bombing bases using all sorts of planes. I don’t know why this happened, but it is most likely a combination of the following:

-Changes to maps making them identical gameplay-wise
-Changes to base health and rewards (FFAR base bombing meta is back from the dead, just like 2019)
-Introduction of new jets that require exponentially more grind to obtain
-Economy changes and especially increased rewards for lost battles

So, how does this whole thing affect air RB? Don’t these players just peacefully bomb their bases? How are you affected?

It’s actually very simple. Players who use bombers or put ordinance on fighters fill up player slots. Air realistic is currently a team deathmatch; bombing bases contributes nothing to the team, 95% of games end due to one of the teams having no more players left, and the other 5% end by ticket bleed because the last 1-3 players of the losing team decided to prolong the game and lost to natural ticket bleed. Bombing bases can no longer cause a victory, it doesn’t even bleed any significant amount of tickets. Using ordinance intentionally hinders your flight performance, becoming easy prey to people who dedicated themselves to air combat.

Why do they do it?

Bombing bases accomplishes one thing and one thing only - providing an acceptable reward to players without the skill or wish to fight others. It’s not fun (how fun is it to fly in one direction, spam spacebar, die to a fighter and repeat?), it doesn’t require effort, it doesn’t benefit the team.

What to do about it?

So far, this might sound like a sweaty fighter player ranting about low skill players “losing games”. Believe me it is not. Here is the solution that I propose to fix the issue which would suit everyone:

A PvE gamemode for ground attack/bomber aircraft with actual rewards. Make a mode (such as the new helicopter battles) but for planes. This will provide a relaxing and easy way for players to research vehicles and modifications and try out all the ordinance options. This gamemode should have lots of instantly respawning targets with varying levels of difficulty so that there is no competition between teammates over who gets there faster. For example, soft targets that provide little rewards but are very easy to kill (no SPAA); bases that are protected by light SPAA that take a lot of ordinance (say, 4x the amount in air RB right now) but provide decent rewards, and, lastly, heavily defended (say, SAM sites) tank columns or logistics hubs that require the player to use long range precision ordinance and excercise extreme caution, while providing significant rewards. The gamemode should also have a lobby system like current air sim, so that you can join/leave whenever you want to.

3 Likes
2

You miss an important point which I inserted in BOLD:

But this isn’t unhindered for many planes. The same could be said about submarine games: You drive to a slow moving cargo vessel, unload your torps and be done. But Silent Service, Silent Hunter and such didn’t get popular because you had to sink cargo steamers. The challenge was to get there and away again. Same here.

Perhaps this is the real problem.

(Btw: Your writing “spam spacebar” kind of demonstrates that your knowledge of the matter is limited or that you are trying to present it in a jaded way.)

5 Likes
3

You missed everything I’ve said while pointing out one thing… okay

My point was that bombing bases currently provides nothing to the team and I proposed a solution to fix just that. Can you please explain what you dislike about my proposed gamemode?

4

What exactly did I miss? Where is your solution on how base bombing will provide to the team? By taking it out of RB?

I think it is you who has not even bothered to read what I have written.

You propose a change for others™ so things get better for you. Classic.

5

I propose to take it out of RB because that is the only feasible way of fixing it in my opinion. The current state is not fun for anyone - if you’re a fighter, you either instantly win because the entire enemy team got decimated or instantly lose because the same thing happened to your team. And if you’re a bomber, you are simply getting bullied without any feasible way of defending yourself - any semi-competent player will be able to shoot you down without any problems. War thunder currently does not encourage teamplay, if i choose to escort a bomber all game it is simply because of good will - there are no rewards for it. However, the problem with this approach is that the system may very easily be exploited if rewards are introduced for escorting friendly bombers. Which is why I think that a separate gamemode for those who want to kill bots is the only real fix.

1 Like
6

How do you know? I certainly would not consider it unfun. Sure, it could be improved.

In a certain way, the interaction system in AB seems preferable to me, where each player group has a way to win, if the other sides counter groups sleep.

7

Lets take a look at your analysis:

I can’t certainly speak for everyone, but the list seems far from complete. Perhaps some points are outright unimportant.

I would like to add:
Demise of high tier AB.
Low rewards in AB for excellent play to huge rewards in RB for popping a few light pillboxes or dying.
(Both of these have caused people to move over to RB)

The discussion in other threads (base respawn time) basically also lead to a “new mode” suggestion: You pick a plane, press “to battle” and get 20000RP and 10000 SL. Because that is what it would boil down to, if the bases would respawn faster.

From your reasons, I would think that “new jet grind” is one of the actual motives.

So in order to change RB, perhaps it would be best to repair AB.

3 Likes
8

AirRB has this problem for years.
The only reason is the reward system. Bombing a base rewards triple rp instead of 1 kill. And for bombing there is no skill needed at all. Only running to base and drop. So everyone addicted to grinding choose this method.

And Gaijin decides doing something in AirRB with zero effect to the battle earns the most.

1 Like
9

You realize that many of these bombing planes do provide easy targets for fighters. In other words, if they would all be replaced with dedicated a2a fighters, fighter income would decrease. You would get killed more often and get less kills yourself on average. You may have no issue with this, if you don’t care for/ have all modules or stick with premiums.

2 Likes
10

the problem lies at the core, the ARB is structured for the era in which it was designed, i.e. piston aircraft, longer timing with slower dynamics, not for jet aircraft that can shoot more than 30km. as I already wrote in a post, an endurance mode would be needed and not a division of the 2 modes (PVP, PVE) which would only cause players to disperse and we would have longer waiting times. for immediacy and shooting, there is the arcade mode. An endurance mode would give everyone the opportunity to get what they want, where to complete the mission you have to complete the objectives within the time limit, so the fighters have to protect the bombers, and in doing so those who love bombing will be able to use attack planes or bombers, those who love combat will be able to actively help by opening the way for the bombers and scoring points with kills. this type of game makes sense, is realistic and is suitable for a mode that is precisely called “realistic”. We should obviously have maps with more airports and objectives, in short Gaijin should start working seriously to fix the mess he made by simply launching new planes in an obsolete mode, and which is no longer capable of supporting such fast vehicles and increasingly sophisticated armaments .

1 Like
11

The solution is simple: Make bases far more integral to wins and losses than they currently are which would make escorting and intercepting CAS and bombers more essential to gameplay .

2 Likes
12

Besides the already addressed (and imho excellent) feedback from @Dodo_Dud and @Mordillo66 you suggest basically a fighter only mode.

This is somehow comprehensible, but you miss some essential points in your view:

  1. Why looks Air RB like it is today?
  2. Who plays currently Air RB and why?
  3. Why is your proposal liked by 1 fellow player despite 54 guys have seen it?

In order to avoid repeating myself i would like to encourage you to read this post - it deals with these 3 questions and might give you an indicator why your proposal has the same chance of being considered like a Tank-Only mode.

Extracted from the linked post:

For me it boils down to 2 different kind of goals which might have a similar approach (strengthen bomber game play with specific improvements) but fundamentally different intentions:

  1. Having fun whilst playing Air RB and enjoying the mode in itself & being a valuable part of your team with having a significant game impact

vs

  1. Accelerating grind by lowering requirements & necessary skills to make a prop bomber more viable by using Air RB base bombing as a tool to get somewhere else.

From my perspective there is nothing wrong with both views.

  • But imho it is not about what intentions or which goals we might have whilst playing Air RB - it is about what the overwhelming majority of incoming fresh new players wants to have when downloading the game and get trapped within the hamster wheel of the eternal grind.
  • In order to satisfy the needs of this player base looking for a plain shooter and a suitable grinding tool gaijin created this kind of symbiotic game play in which one part tries to farm SL & RP with actually useless tasks like base bombing (=PvE) whilst the other part tries to farm these PvE players by killing them (=PvP).
  • By setting the wrong incentives (via SL and RP rewards) you have depending on your plane similar SL rewards for a base kill and a player kill, whilst RP rewards are on average 2-3 times higher for a base kill. In addition almost all bombers make a net profit even if they got immediately got shot down after the drop.
  • So gaijin manages to create a win-win situation, the tanker on a grinding run in a bomber vs the tanker in a grinding run in a fighter. The necessary skill set in a bomber is reduced to pressing space bar, and in a fighter to point and click with a mouse.
  • In addition to the total absence of any kind of useful tutorials gaijin added stuff like brain dead map design or 16 vs 16 lobbies which are purely aimed to accelerate PvE and PvE interactions in order to further lower the skill floor to participate and to shorten matches. The sooner you are back in the queue, the more you might see the need for buying premium stuff.
  • So if you try to take a step back - the game looks like how the overwhelming majority wants it to be - a plain shooter with a strong grinding component.

Therefore my intentions (enjoying the here and now) and your intentions (accelerating grind to get somewhere else) to strengthen bomber game play are totally irrelevant for gaijin.

  1. If they would increase the difficulty to shot down a bomber there would be an outcry from point and click fighter pilots and they would extend the average match duration. Both are not desired goals for gaijin.
  2. By nerfing bombers with various open and hidden “adjustments” and placing them at BRs at which there is no realistic chance for the average player to contribute and to survive (=BR 4.7 and higher) the strategy of gaijin is clear: They are just there to push the number of playable aircraft and to be food for other tankers in fighters.

Finally:

So you might see that i have no hostile intentions towards other players which do not share my passion to fly at WW2 BR ranges.

All i ask you to do is trying to take a step back and look at the whole picture:

  1. The main reason why non-pilots flood Air RB lobbies is a result of the abysmal slow and painful grind in Ground RB due to way too low SL/RP income.
  2. Planes in Ground RB are (outside specific BRs) just an equivalent to a power-up in a plain shooter. The way gaijin made tanks and planes playable for masses created a significant demand for aircraft in Ground RB.
  3. This demand drags those tankers into Air RB - just in order to to research and spade their aircraft to strafe tanks in Ground RB - and there they got clapped by actual pilots (there are still a lot of them) exclusively active in Air RB.
  4. Imagine it would be the other way around: Experienced Air RB pilots would flock into Ground RB as there would be a way better economy. They would kill all tankers in planes within seconds and bomb the living hell out of guys trying to play tanks. The only things which prevents this are:
  • Abysmal bad economy = no income driven need
  • Lack of challenge I = way too easy air kills vs tankers
  • Lack of challenge II = way too easy ground kills whilst flying a plane
  • Lack of air targets = simply less air targets compared to Air RB
  • Extremely low WRs in Ground RB on average = ruining stats
  • Lack of air markers = decrease of situational awareness

If you think about this as a whole package you might agree that your or my view or intentions and/or requests to strengthen bomber game play in Air RB are futile - gaijin won’t change anything within their approach to treat bombers as they would weaken their business scheme:

Dragging masses of minors with access to credit cards into a PG12 f2p game with shiny top tier vehicles which need either a hell of time or money to get them. The set-up of Ground and Air modes (outside SIM) is optimized to have dependencies in order to earn money - plain simple.

3 Likes
13

in 11 years I don’t think I’ve ever seen the frustrating system that Gaijin adopts to extract our money explained so clearly

1 Like
14

Your thought is based on the actual reward system. If Gaijin flips the reward system so it fits AirRB correctly( prefering battle win and player kills), no fighter player has a problem with his income.

15

If…
“Correctly”… what is correct? And why is it correct?
You say to prefer player kills. Why that in a “realistic” scenario?
You say “battle win”. But aren’t your thoughts based on the actual win determination system? If they flip that, so it fits AirRB correctly,…

1 Like
16

There are 5 main player mindsets, people who play to win (like yourself), people who play for fun, people who play to be the top of their team, people who play to make others lose, and people who play to progress. You have to cater to 4 of those mindsets, and what you’re proposing is that we stuff one of them in their own game mode and then cater the current one to just one of the others. All gaijin actually has to do is up the respawn rate of bases and everybody would be happy because you would be able to win with bases, grind with bases, and generally play how you want.

4 Likes
17

Could you please explain this thought in more detail. It sounds a bit utopian at first.

18

Bases used to respawn pretty quickly, which meant that people didn’t have to fight over them, and you could kill enough of them to win with ticket drain. It was easier to grind and there were multiple ways to win as opposed to the current gameplay where it’s just tdm.

The real solution is just adding realistic enduring confrontation which used to exist but was removed cause the maps were too big for prop planes, but now that there’s supersonic jets it could come back.

19

While there was a short interim time, when bases would -on some maps- respawn pretty quickly, I can’t remember to have observed a match were ticket drain from bases ended it. This I only observe when there is an airfield.

1 Like
20

This is not the solution. The solution is RB EC so all playstyles can be rewarded and valued. A PvE mode is at best a band-aid fix and at worst a way for gaijin to say they “fixed” bombers when in reality they just shoved them into a side mode nobody will want to play (because gaijin is not capable of coding actual fun PvE modes, especially ones that aren’t buggy as hell, apparently.)

I mean yeah it’s hard to look past the obvious fighter jockey language being used. It patronizes people who just want to play with a different playstyle, one that you’re painting to be a lesser playstyle.