Last stand of Air Realistic Battles

Game Discussion Realistic Battle
326

I do not think that the current air rb game mode should go, but it should definitely be complemented with more variety. Even something as simple as the current gamemode, but one in every three games the teams have an extra respawn of their plane would go a long way towards making the game feel more interesting. Or make a weekly or monthly air RB EC mode. But of course those are patchwork answers, something more objective-focused would be ideal.

Funny thing is, on certain layouts of the Zhengzhou map there’s Vehicle targets for the north team that move around and if they reach a bridge they blow it up to halt the advance of the south team’s tanks. And on the Korea map player bombers of the north team could blow up the bridges to accomplish the same. So at some point, early in development, there was some design ideas for map objectives and bespoke AI logic for them. That has obviously been shelved in the years since but you can see the skeleton of it in places.

1 Like
327

what did he point out? im curious

328

Also I think unless Gaijin fixes spotting system ARB will be very unfun. I think everyone loves when they play on a dark map with clouds and suddenly sub 5km Rafale pops up in front, throws MICA at you and all you can do is die.

329

This is not a suggestion nor discussion. It’s a scream for help.

Snail, the success formula you had - worked before, it got us into the game. But game needs to evolve. You became a virtual museum, forgeting about the fact, that it’s a game in the first place.

We love and hate this game at the same time. I DO understand, that War Thunder is a business after all, and not a charity. Painful grind is a monetization tactics, and I get it. But grind wouldn’t be as painful, if it would be fun.

We didn’t get any new gamemodes in years. Sadly, we actually lost some. “Attack the D point” remember? Do you remember about the “pick up the intellegence from the shot down plane”? The dynamic point in GRB was amazing, but you decided to remove it.

We got modern jets, and we love them. Honestly, I remember, when Bulanikov said, that modern jets will never come, but community wanted it, you added them and now there is literally no mainstream competiton on the market for you (DCS is too hard for many, lets all agree on that)
But modern jets came with old mechnics in mind. What worked for WW2 doesn’t work for F-16 vs Su-27. Moving spawns further will not solve the problem - you just slow down the inevitable furball in the middle.

Furball IS your problem. Furball works for MiG-3 vs Fw190. It works for the Zero vs P-47. But it doesn’t work for modern jets at all. Why? Because speeds have increased, ranges of engagements have increased too. And both Warsaw Pact and NATO had different approach towards building jets. How it happened, that ASB on high tier currently IS THE BEST GAMEMODE IN THE GAME! Because in such gamemode, there is something to do for everyone: CAS and bombers can go for bases, without instantly getting shot, fighters can hunt for eachother. Yet, even SB needs improvement (and I made many suggestion on RU forum. Pretty sure, there is a lot of them on international too).

Guys, time to improve. Try to experiment more outside of 1st april events. Look how community loved the SEAD test. Why? Because everyone are tired of the same “spawn, missile, die, repeat”. After thousands of games, this is getting boring.

Love you, Snail. This is why I’m writing this.

2 Likes
330

I just wanted a cool sounding title for a desperate state ARB is in.

3 Likes
331

Actual objective diversity and new armaments to deal with those objectives would be great. Imagine having to protect and escort friendly attackers with specialised weaponry so your team can strike a high value bunker or enemy oil refinery. And on the other hand you have the enemy team that has to protect those objectives.

2 Likes
332

Liniyka is quite critical of current state of ARB, has interesting ideas and knows much about this game mode, tho he is critical so GJ probably won’t invite him to repairing of anything.
I just hope TEC won’t be contributing because he would bore everyone to death for 30 min saying absolutely nothing and later have absolutely stupid ideas…

I really dislike what ARB became compared to what was about 10 years ago.

5 Likes
333

Simple example - Nuclear Option. You have a PVP mission, both teams have own objective, ending up with full map control. Why can’t we have the same?

1 Like
334

I think people like DEFYN, Bad Karma, MiGan Fox-3 could give Gaijin some nice ideas regarding the state of ARB

3 Likes
335

Having a lot of diverse objectives scattered around the map and being able to find your own playstyle (bombing, interceptions, strike missiles, SEAD/DEAD) would be great.

2 Likes
336

And here come the issues with our win condition design and spawn protection for RRR which is left from 1 hour ARB.

337

I sincerely doubt that defyn is capable of giving any decent input. He is good player but he is terrible at explaining things or even voicing creative critique.

1 Like
338

Agree! Tho I know only Defyn.

339

yes, so that won’t happen, like, ever.

In GRB you need to cap point to win, literally, if you don’t you loose. The amount of people (like me) who ignores caps is huge, as capping doesn’t reward you well enough to be worth the risk most of the time.

1 Like
340

For God’s sake, don’t let CC do anything in this game or advise on decisions. They might have some influence, but that’s it. It will do us more harm than good; even the “good” ones have some very bad ideas that, if implemented, would ruin the game. Remember, the new ARB comes from players who couldn’t stand constant defeats and begged for the “balanced,” boring gameplay you have now. This was, unfortunately, reflected in the statistics, so GJ saw it and came with what we have today.

2 Likes
341

the fix is somewhat simple and it’s already there

  1. huge map full of mission that drains tickets
  2. respawn
  3. longer match

also known as “AIR RB EC”

and for battle rating, just make a bracket like SB, so i dont have to fight FOX3 while using my slow ass FOX1

also make marker more consistent like “plane under 5km WILL be identified” not when i look at them OR remove them entirely.

342

So, tread about “game is bad”, but what you did you do as a community to improve it - creating another tread where you “that’s enough I’m leaving, change somethin”. You need to look at your suggestion forum section where 99% of it it’s just another - gibe plane, gibe tank, gibe boat - useless copypasta walls of text from wikipedia. Devs gave you opportunity to communicatee with them via suggestions, but you wasting it on a “gibe treads” and treads like this, DDOSed viable communication channel(and suggestions moderators, heck new suggestion moderation now days last 2 month cause of this spam int this forum, when in RU forum it lasts couple of days max(cause there “new vehicle” spam is forbidden)) with hundreds of useless gibe treads. If “gameplay changes”, “mode changes” suggestions attracted so much attention as such useless polls treads like this one, you probably get a better game then you have now. For a start you need to change your own attitude to the game and to dialog with devs, selfhostage position with doubtful “demands”(like “CC should decide for the players, cause they are cool”) don’t work.

343

There are no better arb mode,than grb. Bombing tank mains is so fun.

344

I have made a thread going into details on what to change a year and a half ago. I have done my part. Now I am just complaining yes.

2 Likes
345

How I would personally go about a comprehensive framework for “fixing” Air RB, two possible methods:

  1. Completely scrap Air RB and make RB EC the only Air Realistic game mode.
  2. Heavily reform Air RB into something strongly inspired by EC, but still retaining the “one death” nature of it.

Now how would this work? What underlies all changes to maps, objective types, airbases no longer being able to be practically destroyed via bombing, and basically every other change stems from an unresolved mess dating to this game’s founding.

The mere ability of any single objective to auto-win the game without input from the other two objectives. Killing all planes leading to a fast automatic ticket bleed to zero, which bleeds to zero regardless of what attackers and bombers did, if anything at all. The old ticket bleed from airbase destruction was similar - it did not matter what fighters and attackers did. And attackers being able to wipe all the tickets via ground units without input from fighters or bombers. This meant that the three objectives - A2A, CAS, and Bombing were effectively competing against each other despite being on the same team.

To properly renew the game mode’s foundation would demand the following:

  1. Remove the “No active players left on enemy team” auto-win ticket bleed.
  2. Remove the “Airbase destroyed” auto-win ticket bleed.
  3. Increase ticket losses per aircraft kill so that killing all 16 players + AI attackers (I don’t remember exactly how many there are per team) bleed exactly 50% of the starting ticket bar in incremental chunks per plane death.
  4. Add many more simultaneously active bombing targets, but disable their ability to respawn. Adjust their ticket value to add up to 50% of the starting ticket bar.
  5. Either halve the number of active ground units or halve their ticket value such that killing all of them wipes 50% of the ticket bar.
  6. Extend match timers back to 1 hour, have the “supply line trucks/boats” spawn in at the 20min mark like is still seen on a handful of old maps when matches last that long. These vehicles would intentionally be worth 50% of the starting ticket bar.

Then, each objective is given the time to be taken care of without being forced to excessively step on the toes of planes whose purpose is devoted to other objectives.

Maps must be very much remade to fit objective setup like the above. I personally find maps of the style “[Air Battle] France 1944” to be a suitable model, of which there are several others of similar layout for [Air Battle] Hurtgen, one of the several Moscow maps, and a couple others. Each side has three well-separated groups of pillboxes and three well-separated tank columns, encompassing the majority of the map. The only current downside of this map style is that all players airspawn at 2000m, bombers included, which means bombers are even more defenseless than they currently are.

After those two are properly dealt with, then we can begin to seriously hammer out things such as:

  • More varied objectives for attackers that require more player skill to deal with
  • More varied objectives for bombers that require more player skill and/or teamwork to successfully take out (as there is only so much skill you can realistically add for bombers the way the game models them).
  • Objectives that can influence the air battle, such as radar stations.
  • Choice of ground units in the mode (classic Air AI or using player tank/ship models as is seen more recently)
  • Re-incorporation of AI scout planes and bomber formations like were once present on some maps, which act as a lure to encourage people to actually climb.
  • The question on how “necessary” red enemy markers, at least on aircraft, are. IMHO enemy aircraft markers should be axed completely, both to bring parity of Air RB with Ground RB and Naval RB, and also to encourage addressing of other serious issues they act to cover up.
  • Addressing of the everpresent problem of dot spotting being unequal with respect to different graphics settings - DCS once had this same issue, and Universal Dot Scaling was what it took to fix it. Currently it’s way easier to spot aircraft on ULQ than on higher settings. The existence of red enemy markers is an excuse to ignore this problem. It is ridiculous to be able to spot enemy bombers right when they spawn while still on the runway.
  • Many BRs are completely nonsensical, and would need immediate adjustment once red markers are axed. In general, speedy planes with acceptable maneuverability would go up quite substantially, while dedicated turnfighters would see BRs drop. Without red markers so easily spoiling surprise attacks, it would become much more normal to ambush and blow to smithereens that A6M Zero before it starts turning in the first place, as an example.
  • Undoing years of idiotic nerfs to rudder control on countless prop planes and some jets which at one point or another were intensively whined about. Rudder bricking seems to be Gaijin’s “favorite” nerf for a “problem” plane. Some planes which once had it later had it removed - Fw-190s, I-185s, Ta-152s to name a few popular examples. Others had it given to them and still have yet to see it lifted - F4Us, Ki-43s, J2Ms, P-51Ds (though surprisingly not the A-36, P-51A, or Cannonstangs), P-51Hs, Tempests, F8Fs, and all the 5.0-6.7 BR heavy fighters.
  • Gun damage being generally increased, as apparently it has been nerfed considerably in recent patches across the board for some reason. Most likely a bungled RealShatter thing akin to how Volumetric Armor is still a big problem with tanks.

There are many other specific little issues I could go on and on about. But these are some of the most important to mention.