I am by no means a great prop Air RB player, but as someone who still enjoys — or at least used to enjoy — this mode, I wanted to get some feedback from other players.
When I play as the USA or end up on a USA team, I often find myself fighting half the enemy team because most of my teammates are already dead. Taking down multiple enemy planes takes time, but matches are only 25 minutes long, and the tickets run down very quickly. When I play against USA teams, the match often turns into a race to farm players in useless bombers, strike aircraft, or fighters flying at treetop height. In my opinion, this whole situation is so frustrating that experienced players avoid playing the USA most of the time, which is something several YouTubers have also mentioned, either directly or indirectly, when reviewing USA prop planes. That only makes the problem worse.
Another issue is AI-controlled planes flying all over the map. Sometimes there is no easy way to tell whether a plane is a bot or a real player without getting close, which wastes valuable time and position. The engine sounds of AI-controlled planes are also distracting. There is no clear way to distinguish a bot’s engine sound from a real player’s, so in dogfights, I often hear a plane approaching and worry another enemy is joining, only to realize it is just a bot.
I propose a few possible solutions:
Put USA players on both teams (as a temporary solution).
Introduce role-based matchmaking, so for example if one team has three bombers, the other team also has three.
Increase match time.
Reduce how quickly tickets run down during matches.
Add special markers that are always visible above AI-controlled planes.
Add different minimap markers for AI-controlled planes so they are easy to distinguish from real players.
I would like to hear what other players think about these ideas, and whether there are better ways to solve this issue.
— EDIT BELOW —
Admiral_Beijing-psn suggested that one way to reduce one-sided matches is to better teach new players the strengths, weaknesses, and playstyles of the planes they fly. More detailed tutorials could help a lot, especially if they include good rewards to encourage players to actually complete them.
Mordillo66 also mentioned a few other issues regarding AI-controlled planes. Here are the links to his comments: link1 link2
For what you said about USA team/team mate, this is the sad state of air battle, at some BR some nations performe batter than other and vice versa. Putting the same nation on both side would not really solve the problem it would just put the problem on both side. Also since this is a player skill based problem we shoud’nt need change in teh way the matchmaking is, adding some kind of tutorial on how to play eatch type of aircraft would be a more fitting change but player should be looking at online tutorial and guide on their own ether way.
For the AI aircraft is just about experience, after some time you will recognise AI aircraft just by looking at where their are on the map and their flying patern.
Also putting a role based matchmaking can be a good idea but if you have 5 Bomber in one nation and yu have to wait for 5 other bomber from another nation to queue up at your specific BR it would just making the queue up time much longer for nothing much more. Reducing how quickly tickets run out would just make games much longer and most of the player base would not be happy about that me include, in my opignon ticket are good the way they are.
Thanks for ready and have a good night/day
PS: Im sorry for any bad spelling im not a english native
Hey, thanks for your reply. Based on my experience, the current prop Air RB meta heavily favors aircraft with excellent climb rate, turn rate, and low-altitude performance. USA planes often need time to climb and time to secure kills, which this meta does not always allow.
I also noticed that you mainly play USSR and Japan, two nations that are generally much better suited to this meta. That may be why we see this issue differently. If possible, I would suggest trying USA props for a while to see how frustrating it can feel from that side.
In japan you also have planes that doesn’t climb very good the whole A6M family for exemple or the ki family below 3.7, these plane are still playable but require more skill, im not a very good air player myselft but what i’ve notice for US player especially with P51 is that player often try to kill everyone they have in their sight, for exemple when i play the ki-84-hei pretty much every P51 i see climb to me and end up loosing all their energy and then get killed by me or a team mate, the P51 is a very plane with a good climb rate (especially the P51H-5-NA) the ki84 is more fitting for boom and zoon and the P51 is more of a jack of all trade but US player usually use the p51 as a dogfighter, a good p51 pilot can isealy take down a ki84 even if its 2000-3000m above.
And for USSR plane i don’t play them very much but i know they have good climb rate and cannons so in a dogfight they don’t have the advantage (expect for the yak3 and yak9)
For US plane if you play the P51 don’t stick to one gameplay you need to change your gameplay with the situation your in, also if you want a good climb rate try the corsair famility and with last FAU-1C and F4U-4B you have 20mm.
I played 3.3-4.7 over the last weeks, and this is exactly what happened except the US team wins most of the headons early game.
I check records of all players every match while climbing, and the difference in experience is remarkable. There are way more beginners in US planes than in any other. Event times doesn’t matter.
This problem get worse with every update, old bugs not fixed, but new appear.
Bots crashing on their first attack
Bots circling in formation
Bots flying to enemy af spotting landing enemies
Bots flying to map boarder
Last change I mentioned is the marker (diamond) isn’t visible at long ranges anymore. In the past you saw a dot, zoom in, and you saw a very paled diamond. That’s not the case anymore on every map. Sometimes it still works, most of the time it doesn’t.
As long as the BR system is based on player skill in some sense, the match maker should be too.
Most of the time bots spawn in large formations, and move in a consistent direction, so with experience it gets easy to tell when there’s bots flying around.
I really don’t like this. Not that it’s a bad idea, i just wanna play War thunder for the variety, I don’t want to face people in the same plane as me cuz the fight will be boring as hell
Honestly, boom n zoom works quite well. In terms of planes, some of the highlights are the corsair and F8F-1, which have great climb and turn rates. If u wanna boom n zoom, the P-47’s are great since you can dive, kill someone, and then leave since the airframe can hold higher speeds than anything else at the br
Fighting japan i found pretty easy, mainly because most of their planes can turn, but thats it. If i’m at a low altitude and see a zero, i can just avoid it. Normally i’ll be above them, and there’s not much they can do against a diving P-47 since they have paper construction and can’t follow many planes in a fast dive. Simply put, Japanese planes are great against beginners but anyone who knows the can simply avoid a fight that they’ll lose
This is only valid early game. Late game, with all the bugs, it’s a mess. Especially if you play 1vsX.
Btw, another change I mentioned, it happened to me often, that an enemy is killing bots, but stays unspotted. That was never the case in the past, and is very annoying on the bunch of clouded maps.
Thank you for your reply. In NA, many new players choose the USA as their first nation. However, in the current prop Air RB meta, playing the USA effectively requires experience—something new players often lack. This contributes to the one-sided matches we frequently see. That’s why I suggest placing USA on both teams as a temporary solution, to help create more balanced and enjoyable matches for everyone.
Regarding the bots, I have to disagree with you. Yesterday, while dogfighting someone in the middle of the map, I was startled by the engine sound of an approaching bot. As I mentioned, there is no way to distinguish between a bot’s engine sound and that of a real player.
I completely agree with you on this. I don’t enjoy fighting copy-pasted versions of my own plane in other nations—for example, the different versions of the Spitfire LF Mk X in the USA, USSR, and Israeli tech trees. Placing the USA on both teams is only a temporary solution to help make matches more balanced. If you have a better idea, I’d be interested to hear it.
USA planes are great for BnZ tactics, but they require time, patience, and experience to use effectively. Just last night, I managed to kill three opponents in my P-38 using purely BnZ tactics, but I couldn’t finish the last two because I ran out of time. In a balanced match, no player should have to face 7–9 enemies on their own.
We all know that USA planes are good, but not all players know how to use them effectively. As you said, the game lacks any useful tutorials, which makes it harder for new players to learn.
Imho a lot of the things you mentioned are 100% correct - but from my pov you should give up the idea that gajin would have interest in fair fights.
The situation 1 vs all is not only related to US teams - you have the same effect with GER and USSR teams. And this depends on your server choice and the daytime (morning, evening) - and on the MM which creates the most issues.
So either you play at different times or on different servers - otherwise the outcome won’t change. As a pure prop player (and WW2 jets) i even stopped playing for US - gaijin nerfed all P-47s (flaps) and all other planes are either not my taste or don’t fit to my play style.
The only exception is the 4.3 FR-1 - i met a few pilots using them with a HOTAS in Air RB (i do that too) and i was quite impressed.
Unfortunately this is a player skill issue and not an aircraft performance issue. Many US aircraft are quite strong for their BRs and some are stupidly undertiered, but you still see people fail with them.
Theres also a lot of Air players especially that seem to fly only US planes and never really try out other tech trees, so they dont learn the strengths and weaknesses of other aircraft, and thus how to counter them.
There isnt really anything Gaijin can do about that to be honest. They could maybe introduce some comprehensive tutorials, which would honestly benefit most new players, but beyond that there isnt really any way to solve it unless each specific player wants to put the effort in to learning properly, by reading guides and watching videos.
Im really not a fan of putting USA on both teams. Theres already enough copy paste USA planes in other tech trees, and doing that ruins some of the spirit of the game for me. I remember when the F14 came out and the matchmaker was so flooded with them that every single game had USA on both teams, it made top tier pretty boring at the time.
Ive never had an issue with the AI planes or really being able to tell them apart from players.
I think the game does somewhat balance bombers but it depends on whats in queue, matching them would be good because they are completely useless in the current game meta (discussion for another time). But you also get non “bombers” that could also be super strong fighters, like the wyvern and stuff that would be hard to balance the teams in that way.
However I wouldnt complain about longer match times. RB back in the day used to be 60 minutes so you could super slow play it if you wanted. Problem is people seem to have lost their attention spans and just want instant action, so dive on the first eneny they see.
Yes, the issue isn’t exclusive to one server. That’s why I think a better matchmaking algorithm, along with more comprehensive tutorials that offer good rewards to encourage players to complete them, would improve the overall Air RB experience. For example, a few years ago World of Tanks introduced a mode called “Topography” to improve players’ map knowledge.
as an ex WoT ahem, unicum who mostly quit that game around 2019 and only played bits and pieces but havent touched it at all since like 2023, I havent seen this. Now I wonder how many mistakes are there lol
