Mixed Battles Within Air RB Top Tier

Game Discussion Realistic Battle
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Genuine question. The entire point of mixed battles is to allow the games to flow when a country is oversaturated correct? So the question being is why this is so catered to? I understand the liking of one country for vehicles but for its capabilities and advantages? Shouldn’t that be more so controlled? If something is oversaturated then why not make people wait? Wouldn’t mixed battles just cause more issues for those on the lower side anyways? Why isnt Mixed Battles an option that can be toggled for preferences like it is for premium users to ban a map? Or participate in the smaller battles. Why isnt it a toggle option and is enforced? If most players would have it turned off, then wouldn’t it be a sign that it isn’t the play?

I dont understand why such a feature is enforced if it has such a negative outcome. Yes. There is a positive of course. For those playing America right now… I fear for the future of Air RB as of right now for how it’s gotten so complex. Half the time when attempting to turn on my missile, it turns right off afterwards killing off precious time. (Keybind is Left Click. Yeah. That simple and yet keeps still failing sometimes)

I understand they need to collect data to “Balance” but at the end of the day, these changes never go through till 1+ year later unless it is that critical, as in playerbase erupts into madness critical. It’s obscenely absurd anymore the range in which one country gets than the other and normally an update is either pushed in favor of USSR or USA in Air RB anymore, there is no balanced ground, its either one or the other. Maybe these one sided issues is due to poor update planning of not taking the most popular nations and potentially bringing something of each to them to keep the playingfield level? Otherwise everyone will flock to one country and behold, lots of people either go on hiatus or dont play that BR anymore. What reliable data can you collect if those players dont play and give you that data? Then what you collect is all from said country that is overpopulated again.

I am not trying to speak out of bias here but I know there will be those people who will be ignored as usual… but every country is affected by this. As someone who plays both USSR and USA as well as GRB for Germany, USA, USSR and France. I have no room for any bias on this but the mixed battles in general could use some refinement or restrictions of how games are formed if they remain, otherwise, players will simply go elsewhere and that data collected will be from the same people over and over. Id like to note I seen the same person in battle 3x in a row which is extremely extremely rare in GRB too even though we know how that goes. We don’t talk about Naval. It’s DOA right now with the same people consistently all day.

I understand that removing something like Mixed battles could have a very negative impact for time in queue but there are most likely other ways to go about this. To be facing the same people all the time, the same jets all the time, same countries all the time, and the map rotation as is, is horrible. I got City 5x in a row one day and it was so bad, I had to remove the ban on Pyrenese and ban City because of it.

I feel like the entire thing could be handled better but its the matter of choosing not to now. If it’s all about the data then that data isn’t even closely reliable from a data analysis standpoint…

This whole thing isnt a rage post either. I can hold my own just fine. Its the matter of how stale it gets when there isnt any kinda of variation in it and its the same thing over and over. I havent had a non-mixed top tier air battle in… well… I cant remember actually. Well over a year. Other people will have other thoughts or they may disagree yeah. It’s just one of those things that constantly looked upon and if anything really boring anymore.

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Im here to ask the same question.
Im convinced that some nations will be broken and OP and they dont want to players to see this

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I play EU servers only, there is no queue time at toptier above 1min…Most of the time only seconds. Doesn’t matter which daytime.

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I remember playing back at a time when you would have USA v Japan games over pacific maps. It was bliss. Now you get Israel/China/USA fighting USSR/UK/Italy over an Egypt map. It’s definitely reduced game quality.

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Those still happen at low tier, but they’re rare and often imbalanced (4 airspawning B7A2s and 2 zeroes versus 6 american fighters who have to climb from the airfield, or something like that.)

This happens to me, too. What the hell is this? It only happens with radar missiles. Blinks on and turns red for a split second, disappearing before I can fire it off. I use mousebutton 4 to turn seekers on and space to fire. I would be surprised if it was my control setup because it has never happened to me with an IR missile. Very annoying.

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Things have changed. Depending on daytime and server choice (=just a few players in the queue) your chances to play on the 6 Pacific maps in rotation is more than 50%.

The B7A2s are largely replaced by Ground RB mains in Thai SB2Cs (which can be rather easily outplayed) and all land based aircraft had air spawn since several years. Recently they deleted even the carrier spawn for naval aircraft.

The last map with airfield spawn for US fighters (Wake Island) was changed to airspawn years ago. So these rather painful experiences trying to outrun 5-7 JP fighters at your six in 1 hour long matches are gone.

Edit:

I forgot: The map Guadalcanal has airfield spawn for both teams.

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To be honest they should be happening at every tier as best as possible, I made a thread on this myself a while back.

Completely mixed battles for the interwar era are fine

WW2 era should be Allies v Axis, as best as possible

Post-war era should be your classic West vs East Operation Unthinkable

Cold War era should be the Western Bloc/NATO vs Warsaw Pact/China

The introduction of nations like Israel/Sweden/(to some extent) China has made historical battles even more difficult. How do you fit Israel, a country that didn’t exist, into a WW2-era battle? Or Sweden, a country that remained neutral throughout? And China - would you limit Chinese planes to Pacific only battles? These guys have to be put somewhere. It’s kind of a shame that these nations(except possibly Sweden) ‘ruined’ this aspect of the game, as these nations were shoehorned in just for their selection of unique top-tier vehicles.

I don’t think the issue can be blamed on that alone though, I do believe Gaijin is quite lazy when it comes to the QOL of the game. They do quite well with the whole ‘physical’ aspect of creating a game, but when it comes to refining it, they drop the ball big time, which is strange because I’m sure comparative to coding/modelling or whatever, putting effort into something as simple as historical battles would be quite easy.

I mean back in the day it used to be a 60/40, maybe 50/50 split between historical vs mixed - I’ve personally not seen a single historical battle in all my returns to the game in the last 3-4 years. There’s so much wasted potential particularly in the WW2 era, it’s honestly kind of sad. War Thunder might’ve progressed onto modern-day vehicles but for a lot of people, the WW2 experience is why they download the game. It’s a shame it seems to have been shunned in favour of top-tier missile fests.

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I feel like even before that the “historical” aspect was pretty minor, since you still had stuff like Navy Corsairs and Hellcats fighting in Germany, the Japanese fighting alongside the German and Italians, and prototypes like the XP-50 that never saw combat running around. I don’t think its feasible to try and make War Thunder random battles historical. It’s a game about trying out new and interesting vehicles that are unlikely to be represented anywhere else. There are better games for simulating realistic WW2 matchups.

That said, for jets I would also prefer East vs West. It would need to be based on the plane’s flag and not the tree, though, or else Germany, China, and all the new subtrees make it pointless anyway. I’ve not been against Mixed Battles before, but at this point I’d just like anything to shake up Air RB, and I’m sick of seeing F-4S, MiG-23MLs and F/A-18s making up the bulk of both teams all the time.

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This is true but if the alternative was this, or no historical attempt at all, this is way better. WT has a big playerbase but not big enough to limit planes like the Corsairs from ever seeing non-pacific battles. Japan/Italy/Germany on one team was also acceptable because it at least kept true to the Axis v Allies aspect. It wasn’t perfect and never would be, but it would be a far sight better than having Israel, China and the UK fight The U.S and Russia over Egypt lol

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Having the same nations on the same teams is gajins way of balancing the game

Its pretty zzzzzz

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So exactly what i said. Some aircraft and nations will show that they broken and OP. Gaijin knows this as I suspect some nations will have a ridiculous win rate

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I can think of 1 game in thousands that I was on a US/ Ruski only team… so it can happen.

No surprises balancing = same vics for both teams, when BRs are done by win rates, silver earnt and other complete nonsense that has no factor in PVP

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Honestly, at this point you could improve balance by randomly assigning players to teams regardless of nation… even mirror planes onto both teams when there are enough in the queue.

It’s not historical, but then WT isn’t historical right now anyway… and not having all the super popular meta-mobiles or grinders parked on one team would be a good thing.

You don’t really have much option to avoid mixed battles because that’s where the money is - another nation, anther handful of premiums to sell, another tech tree to grind.

The proliferation of premiums throughout has made “historical” in the context of nations being grouped together even less valuable. How many P-51C-10 did Japan fly out into combat? How many Fw 190 did the USAAF fly over Europe? You get my point - Gaijin sees a popular aircraft they can sell, that slap a new flag on it… and suddenly the Allies are the Axis and the Axis are the Allies.

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