Average Match Length In Air RB?

Game Discussion Realistic Battle
1

Is anyone else extremely dissatisfied with how over the years the average match length as trended down to the length of time to COMPLETE A SINGLE COUNTER STRIKE ROUND sometimes? If you subtract the time to encounter the first enemy tag, some of my matches lately have been sub 3 minute engagements with full 16 enemy jets dead after those 3 minutes.

What caused this in your opinion? What can be done to help it? I think by spreading out ground objectives a LOT more than they’ve done would help spread the planes out and lengthen games while also forcing less furballs.

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  • Masses of plain stupid new players - playing to grind and not for fun

  • Flanked by game play & game mechanics changes.

Even if jet game play is faster by definition - if you play with props on unchanged maps like Norway (very rare) or almost unchanged maps like Sicily (tank columns and bases have changed) - 4-5 years ago the average skill & passion level (=playing and not grinding only) was way higher than today.

Higher skill level on average = kills were not that easy as today & games lasted longer…

Stuff like:

  • Killing of axis vs allies setup (still there in very small lobbies)
  • Respawning bases
  • 16 vs 16
  • Adding of non-WW 2 participating countries
  • Copy + paste / captured planes
  • Adding of ai planes

Killed the necessity to learn to progress and the game mode…

9 Likes
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If you are refering to top tier, the increase in aircraft performance and weapon lethality have cut match times by a good bit.

With better planes, people get to the middle faster and energy stares mean less because of the huge increases in engine power.

Better missiles also mean the same thing. With guns, you had to work a lot more to get good positioning and to aim at the enemy. Now, you dont even need to point the nose of your plane at the enemy to fire a missile at them.

Of course high rank premiums didnt help either

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All jet BRs.

5

I experience this even at prop BR.

Some maps, usually “Frontlines” ones and Lake Ladoga, end within 3-5 minutes. Match starts with 25 minutes left, we will have taken off around 24 or 23:30 left. We begin climbing, some to the side, some lawmowing, some straight. Contact occurs as soon as 22:00 is hit, where most of the players disintigrate and what’s left is stragglers fighting with stragglers often in a highly outnumbered fashion.

This is at BR 5.0.

I am not a good player. I am just average. However, over and over again I find that I am amongst the last people standing, if not outright the last non-bomber alive fighting the entire enemy team (america, f yeah!)., by virtue of semi-sideclimbing and maintaining altitude.

It’s honestly incredibly frustrating. Whether you’re in a turnfighting prop, a vertical energy fighter or a bnz plane - a duel takes a good minute or two of baiting and being baited before you get killed or kill the enemy in an 1v1/1v2/2v2 engagement. This small time frame is enough for everyone else to die.

Air RB seriously needs a wider front-line, with multiple spawns (that are actually used to equally distribute the interceptors and fighters rather than have “random” spawn everyone on the same airfield/spawn points), and the bases and objectives set farther apart and made to matter enough so that people don’t ignore them and go fly at the middle despite attempts to split the crowds apart.

I distinctly remember old Air RB (2015 or before) having the ground objectives much better spread out. I also remember there being maps where bombing bridges was a thing, or a map with an airfield in the middle of some city or something.

Beyond stuff being clustered in a small radius and airfields being too close, another thing I think kind of ruined air RB is CAS/GRB players grinding their new planes. Over, and over again I open my scoreboard while climbing after noticing all my team LARPing as lawmowers, and I see all our fighters carrying bombloads. Much good the bomber limit does us if fighters carry tons of bombs themselves, and are as useful as a bomber if much less (since at least bomber gunners might knock a few fighters out and force them to climb and chase).

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Probably 5 minutes if you’re lucky, the joke is that progression is time gated and you can’t earn worthwhile RP this way.

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7

get rid of 16v16 or implement RB EC

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8

One factor is 16v16, and how prone those matches are to steamrolls. Whoever wins the first engagement is often the winner.

Even at prop BRs, 16v16 causes steamrolls that just aren’t fun to be on. You either end up with no kills because you didn’t instantly go into the furball, or you end up in a 1v5+ situation.

3 Likes