You made a hell of valid points there, but imho you entirely missed the player component in your view. Most people are not aware of “unfair” maps, gaijin might not be interested to fix them - and the majority of players are dead mid / late game when these “unfair” conditions will influence the outcome.
But if you have a combination certain maps and experienced players they can win seriously outnumbered with massive ticket disadvantages or winning by doing nothing.
A complex example for extremely unbalanced maps: Frontline Kuban
Main issue there:
Very late spawn of highly effective ai planes reverse massive ticket disadvantages in a few minutes - allowing you to put pressure on the enemy team out of nowhere.
Do i think it was correct to use the late spawn of ai planes to my advantage?
- Yes and no.
- Yes, because i actually lost dozens of matches whilst flying on the other side on the old version of this map and a few on the revised version. There is simply nothing you can do besides ending the game earlier.
- No, because i would have landed an jumped out on every other map with the usual ticket bleed; it makes for me no sense to fight a rather good pilot in a 109 and a very good plane like the Yak-3 in a 1 vs 2 on roughly equal energy states if they stick together - even if i would have been able to kill one of them. The remaining guy can outrun me forever and win by tickets on every other map.
Detailed view
- I played there a few days ago - typical game. 1 vs 3 after 8:30 minutes - 1.600 vs 3.500 tickets vs 3 enemy single engine fighters. The massive ticket bleed was mainly inflicted by bombing bases and enemy ai planes.
- I was confident to beat all of them in a 1 vs 1 in my B7A2 - but not if they attack simultaneously, so i needed to split them up. The Yak- 9 died, just a 109 G and a Yak-3 left. Splitting up these 2 is not easy - only chance is getting above 6 km in order to separate the Yak-3 and kill it as the 109 G is an is the much easier kill even in disadvantage. Unfortunately they stayed together, so i had to change plans.
- On every other map i would have probably landed and left as the auto ticket bleed would mostly have ended the match.
- But not on this map; all i had to do was to survive 10 minutes and then my own ai planes will spawn and kill their tickets. One of them would have to go for my ai planes, the other would have been occupied with me, giving me a much better chance to have a 1 vs 1.
- In this case both went low, the ai Hs 129 killed 2.000 tickets in 2-4 minutes, the Yak-3 managed to crash and the 109 was the ez kill as expected.
- Of course a lot of players are not even aware of this “special feature” as most of them never saw them. Either their games ended earlier or they died before the ai Hs 129 spawn, but gaijin revised this map like the Spain map - simply not reacting on bug reports.
- This late spawn of highly effective ai planes lead to hell of unexpected wins and losses on the old version of this map. Gaijin simply don’t cares about bug reports if the reported issue is more compelx than wrong spawn altitudes, i reported this map here.
A very easy example for auto-win maps: Iwo Jima
Main issue here:
US teams can win on some Pacific maps with doing nothing.
Do i think it was correct from the US player to play the auto-win card?
- Yes (ok, maybe with a very holistic view) and no.
- Yes (in case you really search for something positive here), he might have won and generated victory SL/RP bonuses for his team.
- No, because a map that requires nothing but running/spaceclimbing to win a match with 0 points is a slap in the face of pilots actually trying to win by fighting vs players or environment.
Detailed view
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This map is like Saipan an auto-ticket win for US teams after 15 to 25 minutes. The JP team has zero chance to prevent enemy ai units to capture A point (Iwo Jima) or A and B point (Saipan). Experienced US players are aware of this. After countless ticket defeats on these 2 maps i check now every match there the enemy lobby for highly experienced US players - and like in this example i found one.
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Without preemptive climbing to 7 km and activating blind hunt at the right point in time i would have not been able to find him on this excessively large map. Without further climbing to 8 km i would have not been able to attack a 46 km away flying PV-2D bomber with aced 0.50 cal ai gunners with the necessary altitude advantage which forced him to dive and turn.
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A standard player in an A6M2 would have lost this match because the PV-2D is quite fast and he would have been unable to catch him in time - so the bomber pilot would have won the match with 0 points and 0 activity…
So it is gaijin that prevents “fair game play” due to unbalanced maps.
Even if they argue you might have a 50/50 chance to be affected by bad map design - the semi-historical MM on Pacific maps is a clear example why such designs affect mainly JP pilots. Even if there is no spaceclimbing US bomber - a lot of Wyvern pilots run all over the map and they are simply too fast to catch.