Yes, and to borrow some terminology from my real-life occupation of organic synthesis, order of addition of the reagents is important.
In order to support adding more and diverse objectives that bring much-needed flavor to Air RB which has been missing for years, first we need to re-pour the mode’s foundation so players HAVE to interact with those objectives to win. Otherwise, what’s the point of adding new objectives for CAS and Bombing if players can still TDM as usual to go home?
The reason Air RB is in the mess it’s in can be most simply understood as players not needing to care about CAS and Bombing, then due to average players not needing to care about them, eventually CAS and Bombing get looked at as “deadweight interfering with muh fighter deathmatch.” When any new CAS/Bombing/weapon for either arrives and disrupts the TDM dominance, people used to only TDM mattering go ballistic and scream down the “offending” vehicle and/or weapon until it’s neutered to irrelevance. That is how Air RB lost all its flavor. The playerbase did it more than Gaijin did, Gaijin simply listened to the largest (and arguably dumbest) portion of the playerbase.
I like the idea, I’d also like for a set of diversified objectives as well and give the AI battlefield an extra dynamic feel to it, maybe give the AI aircraft hidden airfields that you could target, perhaps a base that you have to get close to discover randomly placed somewhere around the map (maybe even irregular objectives like critical infrastructure, dams, communication arrays), huge maps like Afghanistan could become playgrounds for CAS aircraft to prong around in and to have a more meaningful role in after the fighters have duked it out. Although air RB EC would be perfect for the aforementioned the removal of the automatic ticket bleed after all active enemy players are eliminated could bring the possibility of this second phase of the battle to roll out for the winners to spend the remainder of the match doing something else other than just hunting down the last of the enemy team.
Objectives like this become more practical to implement once all players actually have to interact with the non-TDM objectives to win every round. A large part of why they have remained as pathetically lackluster as they are is because the TDM autowin bleed allows most people to ignore the ground units entirely.
I appreciate your efforts - but imho you need to rephrase some things in order to be more precise. In addition you should rework your suggestion regarding your ideas how a new set-up will look like as killing current battle/match goals (“kill all enemy players and/or ai ground units”) sounds easy, but without further changes (like spawn locations & altitudes) for specific plane classes nothing will change.
My recommendations for optimization:
1. Rephrase the title of your suggestion
It boils down that you talk about a removal of the 3 win conditions (Kill all enemy players / Kill all ground units / Kill enemy airfield.
Fulfilling of one of these goal wins the match, the steady reduction of the ticket bar down to zero is just a visual confirmation of that and has nothing to do with “Autowin ticket bleeds”. Auto-ticket bleed is rather rare and happen usually just on very old maps when ai ground troops interact with each other.
2. Point out how your changes will alter the game play
Your suggestion describes mainly effects of the removing of these 3 stand-alone win conditions - and you anticipate that players would react in a specific manner.
If you have watched the recent Q&A vid you might have noticed that gaijin sees the average player as plain stupid child unable to develop things like tactics or strategy - and that they are not interested in complex game play.
Without describing what you want to change exactly in the setup nothing will change for CAS or bomber aircraft in Air RB. Weak fighter pilots will still going for your Hs 129 or any bomber even if they die in this process.
It would also be nice if ground attack or fighting AI were actually engaging and challenging, if that’s the focus of the action. There’s really nothing more boring and low-effort than shooting at the same copy-paste howitzer in its copy-paste trench, or bombing the same red circle every single match.
FYI, this suggestion is only a portion of my actual proposed Air RB reforms - my first attempts to submit it as one cohesive piece was denied as “a bundle of suggestions,” thus I am submitting it piecemeal. In case it looks incomplete, that is why.
In my understanding, an “autowin ticket bleed” is not merely when one side of a given map will automatically win if no player actions are taken to alter the situation. I also include every instance of a single objective type winning a match on its own.
Nevertheless, thank you for the recommendation, I can do that.
The general idea is that yes, the average player would react in a manner not unlike he/she already does - when left with nothing to do, they go cut grass to bleed away remaining tickets.
Even if snail sees the entire playerbase as the 12-year-olds the game’s age rating claims to be for, I do not really think that “empty enemy ticket bar by whatever means necessary” is hardly “complex tactics.” It’s only meant to ensure all plane classes even so much as have a chance to matter in every match.
The other and more detailed parts of the suggestion are pending approval, and will be linked to this one when they are done. Those are more what “exactly” will change, per se.
Axeing automatic ticket bleeds from single objective completion (this work)
Adjusting ticket values for all targets so that each of the three is equivalent to the others (manuscript in preparation)
And using Deep Strike style bombing objectives to replace the oldschool base bombing system in order for bombing as an objective to fit properly with the second point. (manuscript in preparation)
That’s the whole idea in a nutshell.
Thank you for the detailed feedback, man. I appreciate it.
Likewise, I too support the addition of more complex, flavorful, and interesting objectives. Both World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, and possible WW3 scenarios offer hundreds of possibilities.
But in order to make adding those objectives worth the devs’ effort (as well as introducing new vehicle classes whose main job is not PvP to perform many of those objectives, such as for example mine-layers), the objectives themselves need upending to ensure all players have to actually interact with ALL of them in EVERY match, like real battlefields would have any soldier do.