Today I feel like sinking my time into the post that definitely won’t be red by devs.
Ofcourse there are many issues with Ground vs Air interaction and balance but I decided it would be better to adress each issue separately, both to properly cover each of them and in hopes that it will increase chances of this reaching developers. I’ll start with map design.
Current WT map design, at least from my perspective, completely ignores Ground-Air interaction and balance between two. Lets examine it on the example of Sinai:
Sinai is the representative of the group of maps I would clasify as “beating pit”, the distinctive feature of such maps is large scale terrain bordering most of/entire map.
Surrounding terrain allows CAS to freely control engagements and, in some scenarios, even outright deny SPAA’s ability to perform its primary role. Let me demonstrate.
As you can see I completely isolated my self from enemy spawns, there is literally nothing SPAA can do to me or my munitions, except risking and driving out in the middle, at which point they will become easy target for me and my team. Planes can also easily abuse terrain to hide launched munitions from enemy SPAAs.
The fact that SPAAs basically don’t have anywhere to hide/move around doesn’t help. All their options are basically limited to their spawns with huge risk increase when trying to move out.
Maps with similar design flaws (to various degree) are: Carpathians, Finalnd, Middle East, Maginot Line(only for top spawn due to hills backing the spawn), Pradesh, 38th Parallel, Red Desert, Campania(left side suffers), Japan, Vietnam, Arctic.
All of this maps have easily abusable terrain that allows CAS to either significantly leverage engagements in their favor or outright ignore enemy SPAA, while some of the maps are being small at the same time, providing little to no cover/spots where SPAA can hide/station itself.
Yes it takes some time to go around the map, yes you are basically showing your back to the enemy helis/planes(even then not in all cases). But terrain usually provides cover against those too, and unlike ground engagements, you are not facing imminent death by hypersonic dart within second of being spotted.
I believe this needs to be addressed by the developers to improve Ground vs Air interaction and make game more healthy gameplay vise.
What can be done?
Current maps need to be either redisigned or removed from top tier match making. Futer maps need to be made with next in mind -
Large scale terrain becomes an issue when:
- It directly borders the ground map.
- It covers more than half of the map.
- It directly borders one of/both team’s spawns.
The issue of small maps providing no freedom of movement to SPAA is self-explanatory. In my opinion there is no place for small maps in top tier match making, WT Ground Realistic gameplay is not suited for such mapdesign. I can see how this type of gameplay may appeal to some player group but I believe they can be easily substituted with mid-sized maps that provide much healthier environment for WT GRB gameplay.