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.
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.
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.
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 .
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 .
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:
Why looks Air RB like it is today?
Who plays currently Air RB and why?
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:
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
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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,…
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah… no. The skill comes from flying sub-par planes and trying to make it to a bomb target while being harassed and chased by fighters. Sometimes you go unmolested and can “skillessly” bomb the base, but often times you get stuck in actual engagements where you are in fact playing the harder plane rather than the guy in the fighter having an easy time shooting you down.
I love this as an idea.
The only reason this would fit it “correctly” is because of how perverse it has gotten in the past few years. The mode used to actually support bombers as a playstyle and it was fun to play against and as in my opinion. I do miss that.
I’d prefer making bases both 1. more numerous in number (say, 6-7 instead of 4 on maps) and be worth more tickets so that both teams actually have to consider defending them or attacking them to win.
You might want to do some research about this topic. Gaming is a highly profitable multi billion $ market - and ofc a lot of studies have analyzed the motivations of players just in order to maximize profits.
Imho you mix up mindsets with motivations and goals why and how to play a video game and your classifications are rather biased opinions. Nevertheless some things are actually true for wt. Check this overview and you find some of your points.
At the end of the day wt is a plain shooter game with a strong grinding component with all consequences.
Imho this request sounds reasonable from a player perspective - but it can’t be the goal of gaijin to accelerate the grind.
Why? Their main goal is to keep players trapped in the hamster wheel called grind as long as they can whilst keeping the player committed (attached / addicted) to play the game - in order to sell their premium stuff.
If they make the grind to easy they limit their business opportunities. Same when they make it too hard.
From a holistic pov the respawning bases nonsense (May 2020) was primarily the confession of gaijin that they are unable to balance bombers and base & airfield health. The appearance of F-4Es (March 2020) able to end matches within 2-3 minutes just due to their insane payload was imho the final motivation to go this path.
I do agree that the claim of the fellow player looks rather strange, but i saw this even at prop BRs, very rare, but it happened, even last week when i decided to escort a coordinated 3-men squad in Bv 238s.
But imho those wins were not as a result of base bombing being decisive - it was more or less a combination of multiple factors:
Low ticket maps - so 5.400 instead of 7.600 tickets.
Own strike aircraft killed the first 4 bases very quickly
Own team killed enemy ai planes very quickly
Own team had 3 or 4 high payload bombers alive
Enemy team was low, bombers very high
So i do agree that the claim just on a stand alone basis is rather unrealistic, but in order to be fair: It is/was possible.
Imho you mix here some things up:
The attempt to bomb a base worth 300 tickets in a non-fighter
The conceptual disadvantages of strike fighters vs fighters
I mean the main purpose of markers for enemy and friendly bases is to facilitate such engagements. So even as i do agree that you might need skill to survive such base bombing attempts, the skill requirement for bombing is rather low.
The main question is imho why would a skilled player put himself in such a situation (=“sub-par” plane attacking a known target with positional disadvantage) in the first place.
I liked your proposal In general as i see it similar.
But as written above: Gaijin proved that they are unable to balance base health and payloads properly and decided to make classic bomber game play (=killing bases and enemy airfield) useless regarding the outcome of matches.
But #2: The challenge of playing prop bombers was never to kill bases - it was to get to the enemy airfield and to kill it. They introduced then bombers with very high TNT payloads without adjusting base / airfield health points leading to very short matches.
So even after the reduction to 4 bomber slots it was almost impossible to intercept stuff like B-29s or Me 264s (BR 3.7 when introduced) on small maps without reverse climbing above your own airfield.
Gaijin reacted with insane repair cost (like ~75k SL for a B-29) and constant uptiering of those aircraft.
So flying a bomber these days (above ~ BR 4.7) is a rather unpleasant experience - there is actually no reason for experienced bomber pilots to fly anything above BR 4.3.
Escorting own (heavy) prop bombers these days is rather futile for 95% of those players as they play bombers just for the sake of grind and not due to their passion to fly those planes.
But whilst flying my B7A2 i do this quite often when i see that a skilled pilot is in the bomber - you can easily identify them just based on flight pattern, route and, ofc, stat cards. I have actually way more fun dragging enemy interceptors away from those guys than killing a clueless Yer 2 or an afk climbing fighter…
I’m aware that gaijin doesn’t want to accelerate the grind, I’m not saying they would fix the base problem, they created it themselves on purpose, but they could fix it if they wanted too.
Also I used the word mindset cause I didn’t really know what to call it, it’s not really a playstyle thing. I’ve played a lot of games for a lot of hours and done a lot of observing and I can confidently put say that everyone fits into one of those categories or bounces between them, but generally people fit snugly into one.
Base bombing is currently a waste of a team slot through no fault of the bomber user’s. Rather, fault lies on the objective setup of the mode and the fighter mains who rush to defend it whenever anyone dares suggest something different or to require something beyond just PvP to quickly win games.
As long as “no active players left on hostile team” ticket bleed remains in the mode, there’s literally no room to make bombers worth much. Nevermind also most CAS planes or nearly all multirole jets save for a couple outdated abusable maps.
Yet the “airbase destroyed” ticket bleed and ability for CAS to rush the ground units dead in sub-5min was not healthy nor “skillful” either.
It seems pretty obvious to me that the ability to auto-end a round just with their one plane class needs to be taken away from everybody since nobody can agree which should be most important. History would dictate nonfighters should be the main importance with fighters enabling them to work, but that steps on fighter main egos and produces endless cries of “skill.”
Hence, I would just take away the ability for any one plane class to end things on its own so easily to make the stubborn camps be forced to work together and get along. It’s pretty simple:
Destruction of all player and AI aircraft bleeds 50% of the tickets.
Destruction of all AI ground units bleeds 50% of the tickets.
Base respawning would be disabled, but instead 6-10 bases would be active per team at start - destroy them all and that bleeds 50% of the tickets.
the extra vehicle spawn would be retained/reintroduced in all maps as a failsafe to go home with.
Team accomplishing best 2 of 3 main objectives wins. The match timer would likely need lengthening to allow people realistic amounts of time to rearm after finishing the PvP phase to then clean up the remainder of the map.
Only then is there practical room, nevermind reason, to add more interesting and yes, “skillful” objectives for nonfighters to kill.
Right now fighter mains have the mode in a choke-hold, intentionally or unintentionally.