Ever since teamsizes increased to 16v16 in ARB playing anything above BR 8.0 has become absolutely unbearable and not fun at all. It feels exactly like air arcade except you don’t get multiple respawns. The gamemode’s name has entirely lost its meaning as nothing about it is realistic.
Not only are teams getting larger but the maps are also getting smaller. Instead of making EC more common we’re getting maps like small Afghanistan where the two teams spawn 15 km from one another. Matches barely last 5 minutes and the outcome is decided only after 2 minutes. And even when the occasional EC map does show up it’s still not that much different as everyone spawns on one airbase and you know the enemy’s all possible vectors.
All enjoyment from the mode has been sucked out with all these changes (team sizes, maps, 4th gens, BR compression) and now we’re even getting ARH missiles without any planned changes for the structure of the mode. It’s been an issue players have been complaining about for months and made multiple valid suggestions for changes that frankly must be made.
Whenever I get to play at extremely late hours I may get lucky enough to get 8v8 matches and it’s the most fun experience I’ve had in the game. Positioning matters, I can coordinate with teammates, I can make use of my plane’s advantages and disadvantages, objectives impact the way I play, getting kills feels rewarding and getting killed doesn’t feel frustrating and there is a clear reason why I lost rather than it being bullshit I can do nothing against.
I wish to experience this, if not every game, then at least half the time.
If I wanted to play Ace Combat 7 multiplayer I’d just go play that. Even there it isn’t that much of a clusterfuck.
