Imho your pov has the major flaw that you assume that there would be a significant amount of people which would care about prop Air RB game play.
The game mode is flooded with people on their eternal grind tours (doesn’t matter for SL or RP) without neither the skill / experience nor the passion for aerial warfare in general and for prop BRs in particular.
In other words: Just a fraction of players plays (Air RB) prop BRs for fun, uses all plane classes and is willing to invest time & brainpower in order to get better.
So technically seen gaijin just follows this mindset and ruined this mode in order to cater these masses of grinders. It doesn’t matter if you take the introduction of 4 (respawning) bases maps, 16 vs 16, stupid BR changes or bad weather as example - they are all aimed to lower the necessity to gain skill & experience.
There are actually 3:
Destroy more enemy resources (=bases, ground targets - represented by tickets) than the opposite group of random strangers (aka “team”) within a time span of 25 minutes.
Prevent the enemy team from killing your resources by killing all enemy players (aka TDM).
Destroy an enemy strategic target (= enemy airfield) - which forces the enemy air power to retreat.
But:
We all know that #2 is the preferred outcome for most players as the game is just a plain vehicle based shooter attractive for CoD/Fortnite kids.
Outcome #1 is rather rare and outcome #3 is ultra rare as just a few maps with 3 non-respawning bases are in rotation and the average (bomber) player is unable to make the “right” decisions and/or the hordes of interceptors/undertiered fighters makes this a “mission impossible”.
From my pov there is nothing wrong with the guys trying to optimize their grind efforts - and staying alive as long as possible to fight another day is also comprehensible.
I disagree regarding game play.
From my pov they simply acknowledged their factual inability to balance base and airfield HP (=TNT needed to kill those targets) by adding dynamic HP values for each match. With the F-4E introduction in March 2020 Air RB matches ended even faster than today or in the past with 4 Tu-4s.
So they reacted to the increased demand for a low-skill grinding tool and added respawning bases in May 2020. This favors (ofc) and supports the sale of high price premium aircraft
I do agree that gaijin is extremely successful in creating the illusion that there is zero experience (resulting in applicable skill) necessary to play Air RB - and that’s the reason why so many players get lured into buying premium jet fighters and use them for base bombing.
So at the end of the day the results proves your pov.
That happens when Gaijin simply ignores game modes for a decade and just chase money by adding more and more vehicles. Community seems to ignore this problem as long as they have their favorite toy to play with and guess what, Gaijin knows this very well.
Every mode in the game currently should be completely scrapped and built from the ground up.
Thats what I have been saying all this time. Same for naval. Naval has an unbearable grind that’s impossible without prems. Horrible maps etc. Everyone seems to forget that the second they add new ships and everyone goes. “muh yamato” “holy damn its the bismarck” etc. Most people who started playing naval for these vehicles will stop playing naval before getting those ships. Same for top tier aswell. People get hyped up for top tier vehicles as if they are gonna be able to get them all or as if top tier is lacking vehicles and has a solid groundwork (it does not)
The big problem with outcomes 1 and 3(this applies to ground matches as well) is the whole respawn system or lack thereof in Air RB, many of the matches are essentially over within the first few minutes. Most of the ground rb battles i’'m in, most of any given team hasn’t gotten enough points to spawn a third vehicle so it’s 2 and out; the objectives mean very little if it’s 6v16 within a few minutes.
I’d much prefer the modes remade from the ground up to make 1 and 3 the primary ways to win with deaths contributing to ticket bleed a little and just have all the modes be fully respawnable…but Gaijin can’t monetize that.