Historically, in terms of KpS, AB has always been the higher skill floor mode. For a few reasons, talked about elsewhere:
- More players, fewer bots mostly; but also
- Faster
- More effective air
- More, faster torps, combined with
- Similar systems in all other respects (including repair time and aiming, which before this year was always basically identical).
The historical data shows a KpS for naval AB of 0.875, vs RB of 0.909, still lower (meaning higher-skill) for AB. But all modes’ KpS have drifted up over time.
I try not to argue from service records. I used to do that on this forum, and in the end I think it just adds toxicity to debates without adding clarity. If you say you were getting significantly higher KpS in one mode before March I’ll take your word, but the average of all players here in May-June is telling a different story (link). And relative playerbase experience in a mode could have an effect (effectively making the mode easier because everyone who plays it to a first-order approximation is already very skilled), but then you’d also be seeing differences and non-normal distributions on graphs like average score, win rate, and position on team as well as KpS between AB and RB and from StatShark - See All Player, Missile, and Vehicle Statistics, you’re not.
I think the difference here from the game you and I both knew a couple years back to what it is now is very much the forced 16v16 and the bot scoring changes as it is the AB aiming changes. 16v16 added a lot more bots (to both modes )and the bot scoring change made them lucrative to farm in a way this year they weren’t before. It’s very hard NOT to trade 1 K for 1 D given mostly-bot opposition… but a year ago you could kill a bot in RB and still not make much score, in return for being hammered a minute later by a human player. Now that same trade, netting triple the rewards you used to get, would already put you significantly cash-positive.
Also currently, at the coastal-only tiers in RB, new players often face 2v2s, same as in battleship BRs, with 14 other bots each side to farm as targets (because it’s a pretty empty mode, ngl). I’ve done a couple naval events at very low BRs and the score you can make playing basically a PvE game is really quite remarkable.* But it doesn’t require any great skill. They’re bots.
And this, not aiming, is still the greatest difference between the modes. AB still has more human players than RB (66% human in mid tier in AB vs 51% in RB) (link). That is all that’s really making it “harder” here.
*and of course none of that RP you earn in those coastal-only 2v2s helps you grind out what you really want on the bluewater side because of the tree split, so it’s basically a waste of time… but if you start right in destroyers however, you do get hammered, ironically often by spaded mid-rank coastals: that’s the core underlying problem, the tree split making it so tempting if you have high rank coastals like SKRs to just farm the newbs. That’s an artificial inequality issue, but it’s not a skill/experience issue.