I would agree with many of your observations, although there are details that one can not take from those simple stats.
I indeed do sometimes leave when I see myself at a very disadvantaged situation, more often than not however it’s external factors like time available that is more limiting. I rarely play more than one hour, I think around 45 minutes is the norm (VR user). I think I already am overly selective in joining battles that I want to play, actually.
F-111C and A-7E I mostly only played because I was grinding for a decal requiring kills with GBU’s. Now that I have that decal, there’s less incentive for me to use those aircraft.
Target availability plays an important part as well: If I want mudmoving in a Warthog, but there’s no ground battle events for a long time, I eventually also give up. Or anti ship with the Buccaneer but most ships are gone.
Hawk 200 and 209 are really niche, as you say. Powerful armament, but poor flight dynamics and no radar and thus no IFF makes them challenging but fun to play. But I haven’t used them a lot yet, I think both variants only twice or so since I got them…
Other factors are of course the country itself: Swiss F-5E I fly basically only because it’s Swiss, but I prefer fighting in the Thai FCU. And ironically even though my heart beats especially strong for the Mirage IIIS, it’s unrealistic implementation WT disgusts me so much I rarely ever fly it…
I think I’m not a very good fighter pilot, especially not in the missile-jousting ranges. I’m more the sneaky type trying to use landscape and wits to get kills, and generally am more active as base bomber (which I also haven’t really done for quite a while now) and attacker, less of a fighter.
Match outcome is of little importance to me: I try to be a good and valuable team member of course, but I don’t need to grind SL or GE, and really focus almost solely on entertainment when I fly in Sim EC.
In general I haven’t flown a lot recently, and almost not at all in WT in the second half of 2025: I was very active in MSFS2024 then, which in turn these days has almost stopped completely. Times will change again when my mood changes again…
In the end, everybody should play what and how he or she likes most, and I still believe the current BR rotation system of Sim EC allows those personal choices better than any other matchmaking system in WT.
I suggested earlier to create a permanent Br bracket from 12.3 - 13.0. This would force period appropriate fighters to face each other. Players on the red side would access to semi active missiles and would face vehicles with semi active missiles most of the time. The best way to balance the F15A, JAS39A, and F2A is to bring the first generation SU27/J11 and SU 33 down to 13.0. This would also provide an intermediate tier for players to get used to IRCCM missiles and evading semi active missiles. The exception would be certain Aim120 busses that wouldn’t survive at 13.3. These would include the harrier ii, f4ice and kfir c10 mayne even the tornado f3.
On another note I’m sick of seeing gen4 aircraft fight Vietnam era planes from 12.3 - 11.3. That is just a farm session. Can anyone explane how a J8 with semi actives is supposed to kill a hornet, tomcat, or mirage 2000s4 at the merge? Can anyone explain how an f5E is supposed to kill the 12.3 aircraft. Can anyone explain why the hell the netz with python 3 is shooting at mig 21 variants?
The 13.3 - 13.7 should be a permanent Br Bracket to allow planes with fully active missiles to face each other. The planes at this br are capable aircraft. I think that 13.3 is a confusing br to balance. They should have left the sparrow f16s where they were 12.7. Either way the f16s with aim120 are good enough.
Now before you discard my suggestion it answers a lot problems. For instance why does the mirage f1c get irccm. Well because it uptiers to fight 12.3. What if it never did? Does it still need the magic 2? Why do these 11.7-11.3 aircraft need irccm? Then supporting certain airframe performance being inflated because they often get uptiered becomes a dead argument.
The next thing it addresses is this if the 12.3 aircraft have to face 13.0 shouldn’t they be the most retrofitted version. For instance if the f14A which saw service into the 80s had an ALR 62 rwr at some point then use it. There would be trade offs for certain aircraft. The f14B has better thermals and more counter measures. If the f14A gets the ALR 62 then the only difference is better rate for the f14A, aim154A and the horrible thermals. You could also reduce the spawn cost of the planes at the bottom of the br bracket by 50%. Encouraging people to use them for the reduction of cost at the risk of facing challenging competition. I would personally take some of the underdog aircraft for the fun of it. The reduction of cost would support players at the bottom of the br and the planes have enough capabilities to be leathal.
Then we have the conversation of balancing airframes. Since we have a permanent br bracket. We will have win rate data that is more concrete. This will allow the game to adjust performance and armament for a specific environment that is less dynamic. Players will know what to expect. Since everyone doesn’t have the tech trees with the “broken,” opressive planes there will still be diversity in team composition. So you wont see a team of 15 su27s. The game will kind of be balanced. Since players have a consistent environment it makes training and helping players easier.
Or just say fuck it and have the 12.7 j37 with a quadrant rwr and derbies face 13.7 aircraft. Or have 12.7 face 13.7. IDC really it just seems like a better alternative to flavor the day br rotations.
reducing spawn/repair costs depending on how far down the bracket an aircraft’s BR is might be the simplest and easiest solution
but it might also backfire, incetivising “grinding” behaviours and thus feeding even more kills to flavour-of-the-day PVP “hunters”. But at least the grinders might stay longer since their risk/reward margins would improve. Who knows, maybe even shoot back.
Tried to suggest this to encourage people to NOT lobby hop the moment they die if they have a decent performance going already. Wouldn’t stop people hopping with 1-2 kills, but should hopefully discourage those who had a good sortie from ditching when things get hot.
At the worst to make my idea work you might have to sub bracket 12.3 - 13.0 to find a middle point. Maybe break it into 2 concrete br brakets based off of performance and armament?
We have this already, except it not being permanent.
But what would permanent here mean? Would this sacrifice the brackets with 12.3. and 12.7 at the top?
Those are individual balance/BR-placement questions, not general question about how BR’s, brackets and rotation work, I would say.
My now already infamous response would be: Why do you take out an F-5E against 12.3 aircraft, or MiG-21’s against a Netz?
Sorry, I can’t see a single problem solved by this, that isn’t already solved by the rotating brackets.
The permanent bracket aspect would (like free match generation discussed before) be a fundamental change of the whole system we have now, and I personally really feel that while being cool for some BR’s would very negatively affect the BR’s around it, especially the ones just below.
I myself are very opposed that aircraft capabilities and armaments would be (even more…) adjusted away from their real life counterparts! I’d much rather see BR adjustments, gladly using decompression to better balance the aircraft’s combat capabilities.
So what are their choices, going back to “they decided to fly a 11.3, that’s their problem”? Please tell me the 12.3 chinese aircraft or russian aircraft I forgot about?
How is it irrelevant. We are talking about plane performance and capability which decides br placement. I’m talking about how they effect my game play to give a concrete example. Then I’m suggesting something new to encourage positive change in game play.
