The argument was made that Sim players are more skilled than RB players or Arcade players.
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Objectively it takes more skill to be succesful in sim than flying with a mouse and a keyboard with an “instructor”. If one starts from zero it takes a lot more time to reach a competitive level in sim. Thousands of hours just to learn to fly really well. But we are comparing apples to oranges. It’s not the same sport.
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As a game mode they both take an equal amount of skill to be good at if I am being charitable. However if I am being honest I think sim is far easier to get good at and be good at.
Vastly outnumbered but ultimately the most experienced. I’ve seen Sim players who swapped over to Air RB and god damn they are good. Since most of us use mouse aim, however, if they use manual. Its difficult to win.
I’d say the act of gunnery and flying itself take more technical skill, especially in livelier/more unstable platforms. It’s not a commercial/GA sim or DCS for pre-flight/instrument interaction as engine start up is a single button and the presence of a GPS-quality map makes navigation far easier than even something like MSFX:SE.
Tactically/Strategically air RB is probably more difficult by virtue of number of variables present, but flying the plane at a technical level is just move mouse where you want to go and the plane will do it without any risk of stall or spin unless you’re going vertical or have a damaged engine.
However, I’d say a high playercount lobby can lead to the same amount of variables being present but without the situational awareness markers and third person view give you, thus flipping it around when contesting A point or a frontline. The lack of markers especially makes tracking things way harder as deciding whether that black dot above you is a friendly or not can kill you (I hate the chinese air tree for having P-38s and P-51s. I’m fighting germans and soviets, a lightning, given how recognizable and unique its shape is, above me should give me relief, not doubt…)
This is generally true. But the difficulty is also counteracted by the fact that most of the people you are flying against will be of similar mechanical skill level. There are a lot of things that you can get away with in sim that will be immediately be punished in Air RB just due to how players aim in each mode. In Air SB you can basically treat guns as if they have 1/2 or 1/3 the effective range in RB.
Air RB has far more tactical / strategic depth than Air SB. Air RB has a meta that is largely determined by reading the room and killing players as fast as possible. It is an incredibly timing based game mode where the decision to climb to 6000m instead of 4000m might result in your team being steamrolled.
Air SB is far more lackadaisical where the meta can be defined as picking the best plane for the BR on any given day and just maintaining more energy than most of the competition. And if the room that you joined is too challenging…just leave and find an easier one. Like there is virtually no skill associated with playing Ki-84 on 4.0 - 5.0 days in my opinion.
The difference in situational awareness just makes the game modes different. In Air SB…you can just make sure you are the highest guy in the lobby most of the time and it will be in your favor. Even if your team members are dying at low altitude…it doesn’t really have a direct impact on the outcome of the game.
Pretty much every game of Air RB starts 16v16…and players cannot respawn. The fact that the game mode is only a single spawn means that killing players has an immediate impact on the outcome and flow of the game.
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Has the current SB earnings reached the point where they need to seek self harm?
The real encouragement for combat is never to weaken the benefits of repetitive work, but to increase the benefits of killing enemies.
This is the same for any mode. If you increase the score for eliminating an equally powerful enemy to 2000 points or even more, believe me, there will be so many missiles that you can’t avoid them.
From a profit oriented perspective, increasing the benefits of this behavior is more effective if the official wants players to do something, and encouragement is far more effective than coercion (Although it seems unlikely that such a thing would happen from the official lengthy update process. )
This is an example that may contain exaggeration, I hope you won’t accuse me of the accuracy of my metaphor XD.
No comment to that first sentence. (depends who you ask)
But for real one kill not even breaking even for the cost to spawn is so awful
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It is obviously abnormal to require at least three people on the other side to pay for the cost of your rebirth.
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There is one problem with this.
Scenario.
You are in a bomber (playing it properly) but as your team is all farming the event, Bases are dying instantly and so you are left to loiter for ages waiting for something to bomb. What do you bomb?
Currently, for me, this is the airfield. If there isnt available primary targets, I will redirect to the airfield as its always up. I should get rewarded for that both in score and in RP/SL.
The better solution would be to simply have the score paid out upon RTB / you dont get any score if you die within proximity of the airfield/within a certain time frame of attacking the airfield. Does punish “legitmate” players for making a mistake a bit harshly, but doesnt punish everyone unfairly.
I wouldnt be entirely opposed to this (I like a challenge so long as its fair) , except… many maps, like Denmark, have bases right next to and often in between AFs. So either htey would need to be moved or the AF AA would need to be tuned carefully. Though to deal with the Zomber problem. That could just involve making it so that they have SAMs that have a very narrow verticle view. So they can hit something diving on the AF, but cant hit something flying past the AF all that well.
I respect this, but also, SIm is by FAR the best gamemode for many bombers/strike aircraft as well, like the Buc, Jaguar or Tornado (my main 3 aircraft these days in Sim for various reasons)
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This is honestly kind of what drove me towards sim. I remember air RB being distinctly different than this back in 2015 or so before I quit for school and stuff. I recall it having long matches spanning many dozens of minutes, smaller engagements that focused more on pilot vs pilot duels and much more room for disciplined flying of maintaining your altitude and slowly whittling away at the enemy. While ARB as it is now - it’s very snowbally. I feel the reason my F-84B has the highest winrate of all my planes is exactly because of that: Airspawn + very fast = get 1-2 kills before my team reaches the enemy, this cause a bunch more to start chasing me rather than engage my teammates. This means teammates have a numerical advantage, which means we win.
This also means you don’t really have time or space to duel someone 1vs1. You can, but it means your team evaporates and your hard-fought victory that was a lot of fun turns into 1v4 or 1v6. Alternatively you can have duels after everyone else died on both teams. This tends to be when I enjoy ARB the most.
Sim provides the experience of “everyone else died on both teams” much more reliably as snowballing does not lead to fighting 1vN AND objectives drag people out into smaller skirmishes.
As quoted before (Gaijin, Stop blanket nerfing an entire game mode - This is just a lazy approach and does not address the cause of the nerf - #88 by RunaDacino), those effective ranges line up pretty well with real life (in fact tend on the longer ranges seeing as german aces preferred to shot from almost touching-range). I would not consider it “bad” that you can get away with maneuvers in sim that would kill you in ARB.
In fact, I see it somewhat as a bonus. Some BFM and defensive flying techniques rely on the enemy having a limited situational awareness, not being able to lead deflection shots at high aspect that’d force them under their nose (which means they cannot track your roll, allowing you to disengage) and so forth. One of the Shaw quotes describes such a case of exploiting a bandit’s situational awareness to disengage and extend away.
There’s been a few times I survived getting someone my six relying on them losing track of me under their nose (something as simple as pretending to turn in 1 direction and quickly rolling under the guy chasing you and then running away to create distance). I don’t think this makes either ARB or ASM better or worse - objectively, it simply makes ASB better represent the intent of defensive flying.
On flipside though - there’s no instructor. Getting hit can make you spin out in sim while in ARB I’ve regularly flown corsairs, P-51(C)(H), F-2H2, F84B, Yak-9s with wingtips torn off, elevators shredded, rudder taken off and reversed and killed the guy who did that and landed.
P-51H reversing a Do-335 with wingtip gone in flat-scissors without any stability issues
Now, it’s possible to fly in sim with even a wingtip missing if you know your engine torque and trim, but I doubt you could do dynamic maneuvering in such a state and get your guns on target with such conditions. In other words: Hitting planes is harder and avoiding getting hit is easier, but getting hit even without catastrophic damage can and will take you out of the flight due to no FBW compensating for the damage.
Ideally warthunder would have a skill-based matchmaking system to give everyone an even footing rather than seal clubbing or getting clubbed. Until then, ASM is basically like your old school quake or movie battles 2 or jka or whatever lobbies. The only legitimate argument against it I can muster if we don’t seek SBMM universally is the PvE lobbies that actively teamkill/shutdown people who try and pvp in them.
Going back to the topic at hand, while your opponent also struggles with the added challenges of maneuvering through stick and pedal (or stick and twist, or scuffed mouse joystick analogue) over the magical fly-by-wire system that is the instructor… In ARB, it’s fairly easy to get a kill even if you die in the exchange and getting into position to score that kill will happen in ~5 minutes (one of my pet peeves, airfields are too close together. I miss getting to climb to altitude without my team dying). Worst case, you’ll head-on someone and you got the kill and reward and progression. Absolute worst case, you ground pound targets that are highlighted for you and again, time:reward is very favourable.
Perhaps the argument of “sim deserves better rewards because more difficult” can be contested.
However, "sim deserves higher rewards as the time-to-score is much longer compared to air RB for propeller fighter craft, and the difficulty of gunnery & situational awareness means it’s easier to die and the time-to-score increases once more.
Thus, making it so you earn more for equivalent score makes sense as the time to earn that score and the potential to earn that score is significantly lower.
This is the same logic why ARB has higher rewards than AAB. In AAB, you have multiple planes in your line-up and spawn very close to the enemy with lead indicators and boosted performance. This means your chances of scoring a kill within a fixed time frame is significantly higher than in ARB.
Looking at one of my multi-kill flyouts in sim…
- I took off at 78 minutes into the match knowing exactly where to find my enemies in a P-51 cannon mustang
- I flew to the A-point and arrived at 82 minutes into the match, trying to ID who is who as I fly into the furball.
- Engage enemy on friendly’s six at 83
- Land a relatively long-range shot at 83:30 and get a kill
Spoiler
- After extending away and resetting, engage at 84:20
- Get high-aspect deflection kill at 85:20 after closing distance.
- Spend too long getting in range and get shot in the elevator and right wing so I RTB.
- Land at 92:00 at a closer airfield than I took off from and rearm/repair
- Re-engage at 95:00
- Get last kill of match at 96:52, proceed to evade/lure remaining enemy into team until tickets bleed out from A point.
Total : 4 players (1 was much earlier), 3 A.I bombers, 2 deaths for a 92 minute match.
Score: 4106
I joined the game at ~20 minutes into the match.
Payout was… ~50K SL, 10 000 RP for a 70 minute game. The 70 minutes can be argued if you count marauding in the skies looking for targets, rearming, flying out from a distant airfield since you cannot respawn close to the action and so forth as being less active time (The A-point war written out above took ~same time as an ARB match after all, but its rewards were capped at around 11K SL as a consequence)
For comparison at a similar BR in ARB:
Yak-9 - 15 minutes with 6 kills (at least 4 player due to skill bonus): 6000 RP and 20 000 silver lions.
For a different BR,
F2H2 - 12 minutes with 3 player kill, 2 AI kill: 8000 RP, 41000 silver lions. Score of 2700
Note that for either the yak-9 or F2H2, my silver lion earnings were not capped so even if the F2H2 costs 12k to repair, I can easily offset it in ARB by flying well.
Whereas in air sim, my P-51 earns a maximum of 11K/15 minutes (including landing safely) (so the above 3 kills had 1 of them completely wasted and unrewarded) and costs me 4K to fly out,
My Yak-9 earns 8100/15 minutes (including landing safely) and costs me 2K to flyout.
These two are sort of reasonable - doing well I can quadruple my investment in the yak and almost triple it in the P-51 (especially with me rounding).
Now,
F4U-4B - maximum I earn 18K/15 minutes (including landing safely) AND costs me…11K to fly-out!
F2H-2 - maximum I earn is 20K/15 minutes (including landing safely) AND it costs me… 15K to fly out!
I’m earning barely more silver lions than it costs to spawn my plane and this is all with the stipulation I can actually survive and return to base. In my Yak-9 game, I died but I got the full 20K Sl (not that yak-9 repair cost is significant). In my F2H-2 game, I did not die but if I did, repair cost is 12k and that 40K I got is almost quadruple that income.
Do you see the issue now and why sim rewards should be increased at least for dogfighting?
Or if not increased, the spawn costs adjusted so that you can always make back at least double your spawn cost if you survive a full cycle. After all, full score with dogfighting means 2 kills.
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Wow, instead of nerfing bombing/rocketing airfields, they fuck everyone playing SB
Because there are exploiters in SB, we punish all SB players XD
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Hm, I see where @UnknownDistance is going with this…
Can’t really say harder/less hard. The gameplay is just completely different.
For me personally , Arcade is harder, as I can’t cope with the fast paced gameplay that is - well - arcadey, as I prefer an as realistic as possible approach, not a not-even-remotely-resembling-reality shooter…
Sim is certainly the most technically challenging game mode, as a lot of artificial simplifications and aides of the other game modes are absent. You need to actively find stuff that in other game modes are more or less presented on a platter, and flight models are not as forgiving…
In other aspects however Arcade is more challenging and difficult, and it would be really quite unfair to say one game mode or another has “better” players (although admittedly I also tend to nurture my own opinion that Sim player may be a tad more informed and caring about the real life counterparts of the vehicles we play here…).
That’s not good or bad, it’s just different, and the different game modes cater to a different crowd.
And simple fact is that (not representing my own preference or hopes and dreams at all…) AB is the most popular game mode, followed by RB, with SB at the lower end. That’s just how our community likes to play the game.
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Agreed on the arcade thing. I tried doing it for bp before and gave up as it is too chaotic and highly unintuitive for what i expect to happen (probably excarbarated by flying energy fighters).
Which is why i think the notions of “time to score” and “consistency of score” are more defensible arguments.
AAB you will get at least 1 kill due to lead, respawn and flight models. ARB you might get 1 kill, but on failure you can requeue and retry in about 5-7 minutes and the a.i planes and aim assist make it very probable to get decent score still - nonetheless, getting a single kill has significant reward compared to aab to offset games with 0 score from dying early. While in sim you might either fly 70 minutes only getting 2 kills one game or 12 minutes for 3 back to back - there is very little consistency to scoring and time to score in prop fighters tends to be rather long on average.
Ideally rewards are normalized for consistent time units and consistency. Individual skill can skew the assumptions though (say ARB assumes you need three times as long to get the same score as in AAB for the average player skill of 0.3 kda (assists seem to pay just as well in rp and sl). Someone with even a 0.8 kda will advance way faster than the intended normalized time:score and consistency:score would predict.
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That’s the thing. The repair costs are outrageous AND unlimited while the rewards are half of RB and capped per 15 minutes. That means with my 19 kills and 8 bombed bases, I practically didn’t get a reward for half of them.
If they want to cap rewards per 15m they should cap repair costs as well. Or rather uncap rewards and slash respawn costs by half. Because it’s just amazing and so so motivating when I am spading a new vehicle (already stock disadvantage) for hours and often end up earning literally 0 (zero) SL because all the profit has been eaten by respawning my stock plane.
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These are not mutually exclusive.
Fighters should keep the current RTB bonus. Bombers and strike fighters should be the ones who have to RTB for 90% of the reward. Bombing bases is really easy in sim, much easier than PVP.
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Considering the fact they are often significantly more vulnerable to attack (like say the Buccaneer S1 that has no guns, no missiles and no CMs only bombs). The expectation that they have to sneak past the enemy team, and sneak back to base otherwise they get 0 reward is rather unfair.
They already have the hardest time to get consistant SL/RP. A fighter just needs to get 2 kills (really easy if you know what you are doing) and then hide out for 15 minutes above an AF. You dont even need to leave the relatively safety of your teams side of the map. For a bomber to attack a ground target, they have to enter into the “enemy territory”, maybe even all the way to the enemy Airfield, drop the bombs and then get home again, all whilst evading players, AI SPAA, etc. And you’ve also just announced to the world where you are if people are paying attention to the map (or kill feed if they’ve been killing AI Tanks)
I know people hate the idea that bombers exist, but they do, and as it stands, ASB is the only gamemode where they are viable. To nerf them to the point where they are unplayable would be deeply unfair.
The only way this would work is if they got double or triple the reward they got now for succesfully bombing a base and then RTB.
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Then you run into the issue of vehicle classification. The Squadron Me-262, the F84s, Do-335s, and other aircraft are classified as attackers/strike fighters ingame, but work fine as regular fighters. Should those get very little rewards just because of a classification.
Also, reducing rewards is never good, and there would need to be a much greater reward of you add that much risk into the game.
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There is that too. Where do you draw the line.
Also, what “PvE” actions reward basically nothing. Does firing off 4x AGM-65s from a Harrier Gr7 to take out the SPAA on a Convoy (something Id consider extremely valuable to the team) reward basically nothing? or is it just bombing bases?