Apologies for the Double Post, But I felt like it was a significant departure from my previous comments to Warrant it.
I think you’re 100% justified asking for bigger maps, but I’d argue that we need to solve the battle objective problem first by developing an engaging set of objectives that scale well with map size.
I’ve been thinking abou this on and off over the years, on the old forums I had a decent rant about adopting the map capture system from the ‘Wargame’ franchise where the entire map is broken up into areas that would effectively work as cap zones, and therefor each area would almost constantly need to be contested as the zone is only occupied when enemy units aren’t present.
Firstly others have already brought up the issue of map size and the time taken to cover the distance in ground vehicles. The Battlefield franchise already had a solution to that issue from their first installment, which was to make each captured point a spawn point. Now Battlefield is theoretically an infantry focused game, so the first thing the devs would need to solve is how to construct spawn points in such a way that they can be contested effectively and recaptured whilst also providing a somewhat safe place to spawn into for vehicles.
I think the larger versions of some maps already have a workable layout.
The updated - large version of ‘Fields of Poland’ is a good candidate I think.
In the diagram above the capture points would also function as spawn points circled in red and the yellow circles being possible intermediary capture points. Once the point is captured, players can spawn anywhere within a radius of the point, and I thought the layout of this map provided enough cover to allow tanks to respawn safely without making it too difficult to recapture the point. The yellow cap points are just there to provide a point to stage counter attacks from.
The tricky part is, I think these big maps would need longer timers, largers ticket pools and either the removal of spawn cost or a massive relaxation of the spawn cost. Part of the reason why Battlefield worked is that any player could spawn an indefinite number of times and it would only drain the teams tickets. What this also meant is that teams could afford to mass enough forces to make recapturing dug in positions viable, without bankrupting the team.
The theory being that the losses accumulated in death would offset the equivalent losses in ticket bleed. Immediately I see major benefits:
- Less skilled players have the opportunity to keep throwing themselves into the battle and they get more opportunities to learn without being sent back to the hanger.
- Skilled players get opportunities to leverage their skills and rack up excellent streaks.
- The battles might feel more competitive as teams have more error margin in terms of respawns to recapture points and maintain a stalemate, as opposed to what I feel is the current situation where a slight advantage on one side typically results in a runaway victory.
- Continuing on from 3, the relaxed spawn cost (or removal) allows players to respawn test different areas of the map (so long as they’re not completely camped in) an maybe open up new fronts.
Now this is fairly hypothetical, Battlefield has it’s own share of problems, but seeing as this is my idea and I’m biased, i’d like to think that this combined with OP’s suggestion for larger maps would solve more problems than it creates.
Additionally, I would also expect that this wouldn’t result in a drastic re-shuffle of the BR’s we’re used to, but at the same time introduce new viable playstyles and metas.
Last thing, back to the objectives in battle issue. I personally think that War Thunder is at it’s best when it’s simply providing a sandbox to simulate armoured vehicle battles. I think the more objectives and features in the sandbox that simulate battlefield objectives (not battlefield conditions - important distinction) I genuinely believe players will have a more rewarding time in battle. I think most people would agree that most of the ground vehicles in game, were designed to serve multiple purposes, not just the anti tank role. I also think it’s evident that many vehicles are ill suited to pure tank engagements and as a result we end up with odd vehicles at certain battle ratings. In addition to better maps, I think better objectives will go a long way to improving the overall experience.
