I’m playing around 9.7 now and i can count on my fingers on how many maps i play. The game at this br feels so empty and detached from the rest of the game.
WW2 brs feel like a busy mall, i just don’t get that feeling at jet brs. It also doesn’t help these few maps at that br aren’t really attractive, for example vietnam, which is a very old and ugly map. Another thing that makes air rb at that br detached from the rest of the game is that those maps are not for both air rb and ground rb, like ww2 maps.
I fully agree that props shouldn’t play on huge 100km maps for jets, but jets should be able to play on ww2 maps, unless they add like 20 maps for jets in the next update.
Now that i think about it, maybe the gameplay just changes. There are no bombers for example, many types of planes just disappear. That’s why battles feel emptier. But still, more maps would only help.
8-10 is a bit sparse, but 11+ has the opposite problem — it’s way too crowded.
Below 10, most planes aren’t supersonic, BVR missiles don’t exist and all-aspect/radar-guided missiles are very rare, and radars are horrible. The lower speeds, poorer climbing, and poor radars mean that players just don’t find and fight each other as easily, and those just aren’t popular BRs.
10.3+ is pretty popular, and starting around 11 there are tons of BVR missiles and great radars which can lock you a few seconds off your runway. Those are also more popular BRs, with full matches most of the time, so you will get locked and fired on by multiple players a minute or so after taking off. Stock planes which don’t have chaff, all-aspect missiles or BVR missiles have little or no chance, and it’s simply not possible to evade all the missile locks and missiles coming from random unspotted enemies. Those planes are designed to cover huge amounts of airspace, so clustering 30 of them together and starting them from airfields in radar range of each other is silly and chaotic.