they can’t handle their weaponnary yet,… i’ve seen many new premium players at high tier, they’re all clueless about launch enveloppe and windows of AIM-9’s for exemple,…
(F-5C AIM-9E is probably the most ditched missile of the game, because rookie players have no clue on how to launch them properly)
i thought gaijin would have been making better tutorials for them,… but no.
they have made good/ok tier tutorials for tanks
but they kept the worse aircraft tutorial of any game i’ve ever played,… (even the BF-3 campaign mission is better explainned than tutorials in WT)
those rookie ain’t stupid, but nothing are explainned to them.
we have to consider that the part of players coming to the game today are not aircrafts enjoyers (unlike the 2013-2014 period), so they have to learn most things that veteran players knows instinctively.
It is not about intelligence - its about convenience and willingness to adapt.
Air RB became Air AB+ as gaijin offered what players demanded (=easy low skill grinding tool with a strong shooter component and almost instant action) and the players are happy to spend money and let themselves get steered by gaijin’s reward structure.
So its not about bases not being at the same spot - its about the necessary efforts to fulfil own goals whilst playing the game. And the goals of the paying majority defines the design of Air RB game play.
If you look at your demands in post #1: A large chunk is about more demanding maps, better map design, giving all plane classes a game impact, reward structures etc.
If you think this through you might acknowledge that some of these goals contradict each other and others require a totally different reward structure. Why? Because the average player is just fixated on his grinding adventure and plays that what gaijin makes attractive with their current reward structure.
Even if they are currently rather simple, that doesn’t mean they don’t deserve to actually matter.
They seem more stuck in a nasty positive feedback loop than truly hopeless. I suspect only upending the mode win conditions can even begin to change things.
This would require the potentially controversial idea of matches continuing after the last enemy player dies. If bombers (and also attackers) are inherently PvE classes, then the mere ability for PvP alone to win games means neither can ever be relevant so long as win conditions remain that way. I also think for simple gameplay reasons, having PvE alone be able to win games isn’t good either, nor realistic.
But would fighter mains accept that hard fact that some of the really vocal ones among them put the mode in its current state and adapt, or would they go ballistic and shout down any attempt at reform because it disrupts their current hegemony (and then go right back to complaining how boring the mode is soon after)?
Nearly all real aerial engagements took place for one of the following reasons:
Clearing the way for friendly bombers/attackers
Preventing enemy air forces from doing 1)
Escorting friendly bombers/attackers as they do their intended job(s)
Shooting down enemy bombers/attackers
Bombers and Attackers quite literally ARE the mode’s missing flavor.
bomber gameplay comes down to picking a target pointing waiting for 5 minutes and then pressing the spacebar. there is just no way to make this skill based its like trying to make cookie clicker or a slot machine skill based. the only skilled part of bombers is aiming the turrets but bomber players are lazy so they refuse to learn how to and instead endlessly complain about how the ai gunners dont just play the game for them.
all real aerial engagements also took place with real pilots with loads of training and preparation as well as actual stakes of it being an actual war, the fundamental flaw with trying to create realistic gameplay through realistic scenarios is that warthunder players are not real pilots. the only way to make them care about bombers is to allow bombers to actually win games and making a class that requires zero skill capable of winning games is an utterly moronic idea for a multiplayer pvp focused game.
It ain’t moronic, IMHO. The game isn’t going to remove all nonfighters just because folk like yourself think they’re “unredeemably skilless.”
I have long thought that since each of the camps within the Air RB playerbase thinks their favorite class should be “most important,” that the only way to truly end the moronic debate on that topic is to make none of them able to win games on their own anymore.
Hence where my idea of altering the ticket values drained from various sources stems from - I’m rather sick of the endless pissing wars and dick-measuring contests over who should be “best.” Axe all the autowin bleeds, adjust numbers of targets for each of the three objectives and/or the ticket value per existing targets to where each of the three objectives (A2A, CAS, and Bombing) each bleed 50% of the ticket bar at most.
Ticket losses from aircraft destruction would increase substantially. The total value of all players and AI planes would add up to 50% of the bar.
Either halve the number of ground units or halve their current ticket value and leave numbers as-is, so killing all ground units adds up to 50% of the bar.
Disable bombing point respawning and dramatically increase the number of bombing targets, the total ticket value again equaling 50% of the ticket bar.
Extend match times to 1h like they used to, and return the extra vehicle spawns 20min in to all maps, which would be worth 50% of the ticket bar as a failsafe to end hanging games with.
Then, every single game of Air RB would generally demand the current TDM and then also doing the actual objective after air superiority has been secured. Diehard fighter mains still get to have their fun they enjoy - a good bout against enemy fighters. Bomber and attacker users also get to have their fun even after the TDM has concluded. IDGAF what snail would do to Air RB rewards because of such a setup, since if the actual gameplay isn’t particularly fun why does grinding even matter anymore?
I’m almost certain WT will eventually trend in this direction, because while the majority of fighters, especially props, have been added already, there are dozens upon dozens of bombers the game has yet to add. Moreso still if we’re talking funny variants of existing bombers. Kinda like how snail upended HE shell mechanics to create reason to add all the derp artillery pieces in tank trees.
TLDR - the game has the solutions to almost all of its problems already. Changing ticket numbers cannot possibly be that hard, can it?
This is the thing most people miss. And it would work so beautifully in game.
I agree with most of what you said except I would have a respawn system (not sure what kind) so that there would be no state where one team is left without players (of course if they all decide to leave that’s a different thing).
Some kind of pushing spawns back into more defended territories if the team is loosing. I am not sure but I don’t think it would disrupt fighter gameplay.
I do think it’s kind of best of both worlds. Bombers and strike aircraft still bomb stuff. Now they just might need to employ some kind of guided weapon on high tiers to destroy AA units, radars and such. Not that it matters much to them what they are destroying.
Fighters still fights fighters. Fighters can still try to farm strike and bombers. Only difference now would be since bombing is important players are incentivized to protect their bombers.
And I know people always hear “protecting bombers” and go “I don’t want to crawl next to a bomber”. Here’s an idea. Go in front and kill enemy interceptors. This way not only did you protect your bombers but you did what you wanted to do, which is do figther-fighter combat.
Also respawning might help your team shift their playstyle to what is more needed in that moment. For example in the ending phases in a match where you are going to win you would be pushing into more guarded airspace. There you would need A2G capability to destroy SAM sites, AA guns, and other defenses guarding the final objectives for example.
This is at least my idea for an ARB rework in a nutshell. I am not trying to push it on anyone.
At least I am glad most people agree that something needs to be done about the few things I wrote about in the OP.
While I like your ideas, I do wonder - would matches still automatically end via continuous ticket bleed if the enemy team had no remaining players?
Because that in my eyes is the core problem - bombers and attackers are not PvP aircraft. Thus if there is any way whatsoever for matches to end via just PvP, any and all changes meant to benefit bombers and attackers will always fall short of what they intend. The fighter win condition is too smothering.
What I suggested in other replies:
Ticket losses from aircraft destruction would increase substantially. The total value of all players and AI planes would add up to 50% of the bar.
Either halve the number of ground units or halve their current ticket value and leave numbers as-is, so killing all ground units adds up to 50% of the bar.
Disable bombing point respawning and dramatically increase the number of bombing targets, the total ticket value again equaling 50% of the ticket bar.
Extend match times to 1h like they used to, and return the extra vehicle spawns 20min in to all maps, which would be worth 50% of the ticket bar as a failsafe to end hanging games with.
I mean yeah. If everyone on one team leaves they lose.
I am for removing the kill win condition personally. Kills would be only a means of bringing your forces closer to the real objective.
I just know this is very controversial so I didn’t say anything about it. I am willing to meet the fighter mafia half way or whatever but that would be my ideal mode.
Then unfortunately your ideas will have limited impact, if at all, despite the very good intentions.
And that is kinda what I proposed with each of the three objectives being worth 50% of the ticket bar and no more. They still get to have their fun in 99.9% of matches - because even with all the bomb-trucking premium fighters, how commonly would it happen where bombers and attackers wipe all the tickets before the initial A2A merge? Basically never.
Thus in nearly every match, what it would end up as is the standard TDM, but the mission goes on afterward until the rest of the tickets are depleted by other means. True diehard fighter mains can go land and J out to hangar at the nearest runway if the idea of grass-cutting is that much of an insult. If they don’t want to risk otherwise-won games being lost, then they gotta get their hands dirty doing some yard work whether they like it or not.
I was referring to where under current one-spawn conditions, after all enemy planes are wiped out and matches would continue on until the rest of the tickets are bled via CAS/bombing, diehard fighter mains would have the option to land and leave.
Respawns unfortunately introduce their own whole can of worms to the mode.
The fellow player @Spil1tia-psn is not entirely wrong - even if i would have chosen another wording.
I mean if you take a neutral and sober view on Air RB or wt in general every mode outside SB is basically a plain vehicle based shooter. So it is no wonder that gaijin measures skill with the (s)kill bonus and refuses to reward non-kill number related actions (like defending a cap point, draining the most enemy tickets or killing the best enemy) with a kind of MVP reward.
Currently you have depending on BRs just 2 promising win condions:
Killing as many enemies as fast as possible to win the numbers game
Killing the best enemy player/plane in order to decapitate the enemy team
And of these 2 the last one just works (sometimes) at prop BRs.
As soon as multi-role fighters with massive payloads come into play the classic strike aircraft or bomber has no role left - they were designed to kill hard to kill stuff like tanks or tactical/strategic targets behind enemy lines outside the range of multi-role fighters.
So playing on way too small maps with way too many players in both teams is poison for strike aircraft or bombers as the chances to get intercepted increase whilst the number of potential targets decrease as they have to compete with 15 other guys for them.
Okay so if they aren’t irredeemably skillless how would you make bomber gameplay more skill based? Please explain how mousing over a target and waiting can possibly be made skillful I would love to hear it
You say that you can just land and leave as a fighter player but there is nothing stopping someone from just not spawning or camping the airfield until the endgame and going and shooting all of your attackers after you leave and winning the game
I do think bombers should be allowed to win games. I remember when Tu 4 came out and they were winning by destroying the airfield because they were not intercepted fast enough. At the time, it was almost impossible and too risky to intercept them at their original BR, but it was cool that people had to care about bombers not only because of the XP piñata but as a relevant objective.
They shouldn’t be as OP as Tu 4 on release but not too far from it either. Destroying bases and possibly ground targets should also have a bigger impact, not only in tickets but also, it should have gameplay changes like destroying airfield modules in SB does; maybe destroying basds would hamper enemy anti air units by lowering their ammo and number of units, or something like that.
This would give fighters the purpose to not only defend their bombers and strike aircraft like they should, but also interceptors would be more important too.
It’s just a thought but I think a happy medium would make everybody happy and improve the quality of air RB by a fair bit. Could also be the door to larger scale battles.