I was gone for a few weeks and did not notice this reply
I argue your view is through rose-tinted glasses for an era that never existed.
No, bombers were never “OP” except for the rare occasions around 2013-2014 where specific groups of 4 heavy bombers had enough bombs to take out all bases and the AF in one go, but gaijin quickly buffed bases such that a reload was always necessary, which is all but a death sentence since they are weakest at low altitude. The death-star era made bombers very hard to kill, but you could just ignore them for the most part, which is key and is what we are witnessing again.
Notice the crucial fact that the few times in the game’s history when bombers could reliably achieve their intended win condition, they were immediately nerfed because of severe community backlash. Bombers doing what they were supposed to do was extremely unpopular, so they were never allowed to do it again. This highlights that the problem with bombers has always been fundamental.
The optimal strategy of bombers is to climb high and away from enemies. Good fighter pilots always begin by engaging each-other, otherwise they are putting their team at a disadvantage later. As the fight progresses, they lose altitude due to sustained maneuvering, which makes intercepting attackers at low altitude the natural game progression. To climb back up and intercept bombers on the other had can take 5-10, sometimes even 15 minutes, which is a mind-numbingly boring form of anti-gameplay.
A bomber’s strategy is to avoid the fight entirely, a bomber victory by AF destruction made the efforts of everyone else in the lobby pointless. Everyone strongly disliked when they could end the match in a few minutes by using their airspawn to slip past enemy fighters, so gaijin responded by making bombers’ main win condition extremely difficult to achieve and ultimately removed it.
For almost the entire game’s history, bombers have not been realistically able to win the game on their own and had to rely on ticket bleed or their team. Their default strategy is to stall for time by climbing to absurd altitudes and running to the map corner, hoping ticket bleed gives them a win. I have spent 15+ minutes chasing after bombers just to end the match more times than I could count. They were useless long before the win condition was removed, that just made it official.
They were nerfed because while they were useless, they could still drag games on for up to an hour by running away. For well over a decade, space climbing bombers were the number one ARB complaint, tied with AAA camping. Once again, a vehicle that cannot win but that can drag the game on for an indefinite amount of time is fundamentally bad game design
And I remind you that they never had a purpose outside of a few very rare occasions which gaijin quickly patched because it turns out that allowing a solitaire vehicle to win a PvP match is highly unpopular.
This was literally never true. Air RB was always a one-spawn dogfight gamemode, and it works perfectly well like that, despite youtubers whining about it. Bombers and attackers can nudge tickets towards one team’s favor, but the fighters have always decided the match
I do remember the long high-altitude dogfights with p-47s, but these were exiting because you were forced into them, if you did not engage you would be the one that is attacked immediately, it was an actual fight. Chasing after space-climbing bombers on the other hand is not gameplay, the enemy is actively trying to avoid you, and they cannot even win the game even if they escape so they are really just trying to waste your time
They were “unplayable” in the sense that they did not contribute much to the match and were mostly relegated to solo grinding. As long as they bothered no one, they were not a problem.
This is where I fundamentally disagree on every level. The goal of the match is to do what you came to do and leave when you are done. In a fighter, your goal is to shoot down enemy aircraft which pose a threat, not to go after ground targets because there is no one else to shoot at (which you are not equipped to take down effectively anyway). Being stuck in a match when you run out of useful things to do is once again, fundamentally bad game design.
If your solo style of gameplay requires me to waste my precious time doing nothing of value then we should not share a gamemode, which is my point. Bombers should be removed from ARB and moved to their own gamemode
I would not be surprised knowing Gaijin, but if they ruin WW2 props (the oldest and by far the best part of the game) then veterans will just leave, it is a bad idea