No Air RB Rework or Air RB EC on the 2024 Roadmap

Game Discussion Realistic Battle
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30

I just said you’re predominantly a mid tier player according to your stat card. Not that your stat card isn’t impressive or anything like that, which it is btw…so good job there…Im not trying to insult you at all.

But some of us psycho-players have every plane in the game and have also been playing since the 2013 beta…

Both of these statements are true. But in this case, you’re admitting that Air RB, as it stands, is broken.

Unfortunately, we cannot force players to play the game a certain way. Good game developers modify game mechanics to entice players to play in a predictable way. It’s game mode design “101”.

And my point of making all these threads, for years, regarding the ridiculously broken state of Air RB, especially at the upper tiers, is aimed at fixing the issues you listed above.

The simplest fix with the current ARB game mode and the current maps would be to reduce team sizes. This would, at least, decrease the size of the furball. But yes there are other options as well that include:

  • multiple airfields to spawn from per side.

  • spreading out Ground AI and bases.

  • more maps with more terrain features for cover.

  • potentially removing enemy markers.

  • removing or fixing auto-AI ticket bleed.

All of the above or some portion of the above would really help ARB without talking about a respawn mechanic. But as i said, the VAST majority of players want a respawn mechanic… so why not give them one as well as a longer match.

The no respawn mechanic is a dinosaur. It was relevant when ARB was a completely different game mode. Today, nobody cares about dying in ARB. Nobody is cautious. So the “no respawn” mechanic really doesnt do much aside from artificially shuffle the players through loading screens every 5 minutes. It’s clearly a mechanic designed for prop battles and not our current modern jets.

Whether an ARB mode with respawning is like Sim EC or is done differently like Ground RB is up for debate. I personally like some blend between the two but Ill take anything at this point…

Im interpreting what i see from multiple polls that have gained thousands (sometimes tens of thousands) of votes.

From my personal experience there are two types of ARB players. Technical pilots and Strategic Pilots.

Technical pilots typically play Fighters that want quick, technical battles - they ideally want that 1 v 1, 2 v 2…

…And strategic pilots that fly a variety of planes and want something that requires time and thought - these can also be more laid back players that play bombers.

The current setup of ARB caters to none of the above. Technical players get quick matches but have to deal with 16 v 16 spam and Strategic Players attempt to do objectives or hit Ground, only for the match to end within 5 minutes.

I mean FFS, half the time i get down to the ending 1 v 1 in ARB, the match ends due to a sudden drop in tickets.

It amazes me how much leniency some people give the developers… Yes. The Devs must spend some effort on balancing the game mode.

If they added RB EC, they could simply apply an RP/SL factor to the mode, like they do for all other modes to adjust outsized earnings, if outsized earnings were a problem.

However, comparing RB EC to the current RB, the time a player takes to load into a new RB match, takeoff and fly to the fight, is very similar to the time it would take in an EC match, after death, to spawn into another plane, takeoff and return to the fight. Ive personally experimented with this, at top tier, in Air RB and using Sim EC.

In the current ARB non-EC maps, it takes me about 3-4 minutes(depending on the map) after i die, to exit a game, load into a new match, and fly to the battle area.

In Sim EC or the EC maps in custom battles using ARB controls, respawning and re-enterring the battle area takes about 5 minutes, sometimes 4.5 minutes.

So the fact that EC mode uses EC maps actually makes the time-to-grind very comparable. There would certainly be balancing needed for an ARB EC but it’s very feasible…

Regarding ARB EC from 2017, I was one of the players that gave outsized negative feedback to Gaijin regarding the mode at the time. War Thunder was NOT ready for that mode at all. The mode itself did not cater to subsonic aircraft. The AI was (and still kinda is) braindead and the playerbase was FAR too small to split the matchmaker. At the time, the regular Air RB mode made sense. It was populated by high skilled fighter focused players and Air AB was where strategic players went. Air AB is a mess at top tier so now everyone plays Air RB at the upper tiers.

The game today has 10- 15 times the amount of players it did back when Air RB EC was first trialed. It also has WAY more advanced aircraft. At this point, the game is ready for EC or something similar to EC.

I also wouldn’t be so sure about RB EC is “never coming back”. Last update they added a bunch of SAM systems to the files and theres been a trickle of anti-ship missiles.

It may not be a copy-paste of Sim EC but i don’t think they have a choice. They really need to add a new game mode or rework their current Air game modes in order to truly bring War Thunders aviation to the next level.

Otherwise, another developer will fill this space. Eagle Dynamics, who makes DCS, has been hinting about something like this and developers have as well. War Thunder and it’s popularity is gaining a lot of attention.

All it takes is one of these devs, with deep pockets, who is motivated enough and they may attempt to steal an existing franchises under-served playerbase.

In War Thunder, Aviation players, at the moment, are definitely under-served.

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it is luckily only for the first half of the year so we can hope/cope that changes might come in the second half. But yes i totally agree with you.

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I’m admitting that PLAYERS are Broken,… not the game.

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Oh we can:
Simply set 2/3 airfields per side, and force player to spawn on each one airfields with same number.

Idea that i already explainned elsewhere on a similar thread composed by raging ones,…

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Is not a problem whatsoever… at least people try to defend themselves, because they do have only 1 live.
Pretty different than other similar modes(not including SIM because the Playerbase is sensibly different), when players don’t to YOLO at some point if he knows already that he can respawn.

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As i said above, i agree with this. This is game mode design and certainly would help the current mode alot.

Im sorry man. You’re wrong here. Nobody defends themselves in ARB anymore. Maybe at the mid tiers but certainly not at the upper tiers. Not with the premium spam and the number of newer players at top tier. Nobody cares about consequences in ARB anymore. Trust me, i miss the days when they did care.

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36

You mistake me.

What I’m talking about is not my personal opinion on what “ideal WT” would look like. I of course have one, just like anybody, but this thread isn’t about that. It’s about the roadmap that Gaijin has published. So we are talking about Gaijin’s decision-making process.

No one here can know for sure of course, and we can only speculate, but the point is that it is imho completely futile to discuss “how we’d like this and that mode to be” in a vacuum. If you want Gaijin to take different decisions, you need to think about what motivated those decisions; what incentives they are responding to; what their goals are (which are different from yours and mine); and what needs to change in order for the decision to also change.

Just because I describe (my interpretation of) their POV, that doesn’t make it my POV. I’m surprised by how often I have to make that distinction.

For example:

Absolutely correct. Gaijin has a clear incentive to focus on just chucking in as many vehicles as possible as fast as possible in all game modes. But the mission types and maps have stayed largely the same, with predictable consequences.

This negatively affects balance, but it’s not discernibly affecting player count, which is higher than ever before in WT history.

When presented with this situation, how do you think a for-profit company is going to behave?

Yes, they could definitely do that. However, there is a wrinkle here: Gaijin, like all MMO devs, is very reluctant to introduce additional game modes unless there is a clear benefit to them in doing so. They could have nerfed RB EC’s rewards rather than removing it, but axing it avoids any possible unintended side effect and makes their job easier. And if you’re disappointed by that - well, that’s too bad… but you’re still playing the game, are you not?

Again, this is a for-profit company. For-profit companies usually aren’t very nice.

They have the full numbers however, which we’ll never see. All I can say from the outside is that every single time grind-oriented players have found a “shortcut” it has been closed very aggressively.

A good example of that is the way they are artificially inflating the marketplace price of event vehicles. Up to now, even if you missed the event, you knew that buying the vehicle on the marketplace afterwards was probably going to be cheaper than buying more than one stage of the event for GE.

That doesn’t suit Gaijin. The event is designed to make you either play more or spend more or both. If you just wait and then pick up the event vehicle for cheaps afterwards, the objective is undermined. So what have they done? They’ve hit down hard with the hammer, and now you need 750.000 mission score to get a tradeable coupon, which will create scarcity and drive up prices massively, and give people an incentive to actually play or buy stages for GE.

I say again: you need to understand their reasoning if you want to figure out where the game could plausibly go next and how players might nudge it this or that way.

That logic doesn’t usually seem to move them. For example, the amount of RP needed to research all vehicles has grown massively, and yet they have delayed the introduction of a modest RP bonus for starting a new nation by over a year. This is for a research modification that they themselves wanted because it incentivises players to start different trees. They are incredibly, imho excessively risk-averse when it comes to anything that might alter the pacing of player progression.

They very much do have a choice.

The thing to keep in mind IMHO is that War Thunder banks a lot on two things: ease of accessibility (it’s very arcadey while giving the illusion of not being that arcadey) and extreme vehicle variety. That is their USP in the market. On top of that, the constant barrage of events and challenges ties you in deeper and deeper until it becomes a sort of sunk cost fallacy mentality.

While there is some overlap between player bases, a lot of players wouldn’t switch to DCS and its learning curve to play an equivalent of RB EC.

All game modes are, compared to their potential. Because that’s not what they’re really selling.

War Thunder at this point is vehicle combat pokemon. And in that aspect, it has zero competition.

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37

Ok, big boy, i understand you’ve been paying premium to buy everything in the game, but i was not, and i have SEVERAL nation grinded up to MAX BR, and i played those AIRCRAFTS aswell, from stock to full modified.

I still played 2 time the number of games, and have far more experience in every BR than you do.

So this is nothing else than bullying at this point, that’s a warning.

Apart from that: if you think that then you’re no more interesting in this debate anymore,… as you said yourself → you play as an AI

Don’t care if you want → it’s the difference between me and you,… (or shall i say the difference with goldy players and true players)

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Anybody can look up my stat card. I have every tech tree plane in the game with over half of top tier planes spaded.

I tried to show you respect above. Whether it’s a language barrier or a feeble mind, you cannot do the same and instead default to insults.

This will be my last response to you.

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39

I understand what you’re saying.

But War Thunder is still a game and requires a somewhat healthy relationship between player and gameplay.

Right now, my fear is that they are leaning too far into turning Air RB into Gaijin’s casino.

Like a lot of mobile games, creating a mode around frustration is not a good long term strategy. Very profitable in the short term but builds a ton of resentment.

Air RB, right now, feels like being given the keys to a Ferrari and being given a small McDonald’s parking lot to drive it in.

Ive personally stopped playing Air RB for now and just stick to playing Ground RB, which i suck at.

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MMOs have a hard time with that. Or rather they come with particular trade-offs. And in some respects the industry’s been allowed to get away with a bit too much.

WT is remarkably non-toxic compared to most MMOs, and that’s one of the reasons behind its longevity… but it’s still an MMO.

If you were to pay a retail price that reflects the development of the 2000 vehicles in game and everything else that’s in it, the price point would simply not be sustainable. And instead, you can access the vast majority of that content for free, which credit where credit is due, is absolutely remarkable. But you pay a price for that, and it comes in the form of gameplay limitations.

A game like this can never have a cohesive gameplay experience because it has to accomplish different goals, like keeping as many people in the game at any one time, and monetising their stay even after they’ve technically already gotten access to the game for free. Usually with MMOs you need to screw Peter in order to pay Paul.

Every mode is like this. Think about ground. What is the unique offering of a gun that maintains amazing ballistic properties over 2 or even 3 km when 90% of the time your engagements will be under 500m? We have vehicles with laser rangefinders, and most of the time you won’t really need to use it - or will get just marginal utility from it - because the maps are the size of a postcard.

But they are that size for a reason… more than one, actually.

They already are. But you also need to remember, the player community is not as good as they think they are.

I’d just like to point this out. Players got so upset during the recent spall liner fiasco that an individual went so far as to doxx a Gaijin employee - I repeat, this was over spall liners and the handling of technical bug reports.

Meantime, Gaijin has removed several vehicles from both the game and the market so as to stick them in GE lootboxes. RNG crates that you pay with real money. No longer friendly, no-stakes SL gambling, but real gambling.

This is a game played by minors as well.

So where is the outrage of the community over that? Instead, what you see is widespread resignation that these things are just a fact of life. It is what it is. That really worries me, because the GE lootboxes aren’t where this thing ends, it’s where it starts. They are a very worrisome omen for what will come to the game in the future.

There are more and more slot machine-like dynamics in War Thunder, both in the monetised aspects and the free ones, and there is a simple reason for that: they work. If they didn’t, gambling as a widespread phenomenon wouldn’t exist.

It is up to the players to make this non-viable. All it takes is to literally not buy a Christmas GE chest, in this instance at least, and yet even that wasn’t done. Facebook, Reddit and even the forums were full of players showing off what they got from their GE chests…

But anyway.

I personally find that the best way to enjoy War Thunder is to be aware that those pervese incentives exist, and simply don’t give in to the manipulation. I have my own reasons for playing, and my own areas of the game that I enjoy, even that I love. I love the high skill ceiling, the depth that comes with trying to master so many different vehicles and the lineup system, the fact that it lets me play with friends in a very cooperative, problem-solving way.

These are things that let me stay in WT because I enjoy them. I see a lot of people who seem to stick around just because they have no alternative or they’re caught in the slot machine loop of the game, and I think that’s part of why there is so much frustration constantly boiling in the background of the playerbase.

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41

I agree with the vast majority of this.

But just taking GRB as an example, it’s not as broken as Air RB. It has strategy and It can kind of suit a bunch of different play styles.

GRB definitely has its issues but its able to walk that line between balanced-fun and frustrating-profit-driven-RNG far better than Air.

There can still be adjustments to Air while maintaining profitability. I do believe the suggestions ive made will increase devotion to the game mode and therefore increase addiction.

There are some pretty small changes that can be made to make the mode more fun that i listed above, even without an EC mode being introduced.

And if we ever got an official RB EC mode, it opens Gaijin up to introducing a ton more aircraft and mechanics that they can spam us with and charge $70 for…

Yeah Gaijin is going to do what makes them money but they’re developing a game. Ideally they want it to be a good game.

Sometimes making a good game requires the playerbase to rally around a cause and that’s all im trying to do with all these threads.

I dont want to hurt the mode or force any player to play a specific way. I just want to increase player choice when it comes to Aviation in War Thunder. And im certainly not alone here.

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Thanks those stats are coming from 2014,… i have played many other aircrafts since,… and i’m not agreeing with you by qualifying me as a “Mid Tier Player”

It is insulting,… and that’s the only insults i saw there.

I played without any premium to bring me up there,… both Tanks and Aircrafts, a total of game over 31k,…

Then you come after spamming aircrafts only, having half my number of games, claiming you have every aircraft so that you have paid some premium for that. (and also lied about starting this game in 2013,… you registered the 22th of February 2014)

So no, i’m not accepting your “MiD TiEr PlAyEr” as a “mark of respect” (your words).

You won’t answer me, fine, i don’t care what you can claim anyways as all you’ve been doing is to insutled me, and bashed away what i could say,…

Have fun playing 16vs16, which would be the norm for longer than you can think.

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Dude. Just stop. You’re spiraling.

Your stats are easy to find, and so are mine. You can make up whatever excuse you want or throw insults. I just dont care. Maybe you’re way better. Maybe you’re way worse. Idfk.

We’re just talking ideas here.

We’re both long term players and supposed to be cordial, so shame on you for turning this into an insult-fest and getting so worked up.

Clearly i hit some deep nerve by saying you play mostly mid-tier. I didn’t think that was an insult. I personally like mid tier alot.

Please just kindly stop your meltdown and be done with it.

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thought you’re not gonna answer, from that previous statement of yours.
but since you’re being moralizing to me:

i’m waiting excuses - here’s why:
You clearly stated that having all aircraft makes you able to know better the situation than me on what happens at high BR :
→

→

  • In what world, this makes you more qualified to the current talk?

You generally qualify people based on a statcard
→

→

  • In what world, this makes you more qualified to the current talk?

OK, i may have been insulting you back, because i felt insulted / overlooked at, and for that i’m sorry - but clearly i’m not going to be overlooked/insulted, and so i’m waiting excuses!

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You’re getting unreasonably worked up at a small statement i made regarding you playing mid tier. Its fine. Idc anymore.

The only reason i brought it up is because is Air RB at the mid tiers is not as broken as Air RB at the upper tiers.

So if someone plays mostly mid tier, they don’t quite experience all the negatives of the upper tiers.

I play predominantly the upper tiers with a significant amount of experience. So i predominantly comment on the upper tiers.

If you were to ask me about Air RB at 1.0, i wouldn’t know that much. Haven’t played down there in a while.

Im not lying about my experience. My stat card is there for everyone to see…

I have a premium account and have for 7ish years, because i like to support the devs and i have a few premium planes - Fw190D13, yak-38 and Harrier Gr1. I stopped buying premiums because i enjoy grinding through the trees more now. I have every plane now. Ill be honest, its not worth it. They all fly really similar. Not hiding anything here…

Ultimately, upper tier Air RB is broken and there are many methods of fixing it which ive outlined several times on here.

You disagree. That’s fine. Play Air RB. Enjoy it.

Just stop spiraling on the forums.

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The problem is not that we disagree about the modes,… it’s reason and methods you used to display that i’m wrong in your POV.

You can hide yourself in, but that’s pathetic after being moralizing me,…

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Just playing the game since 2013 does not make you any more qualified on the topic of how toptier air RB works than someone else. In 2024, air RB is vastly different than it was in 2013, or really any other year youve been saying. You don’t seem to understand the various issues the playerbase has with toptier.

Even with multiple spawn airfields, every player is still going to congregate in the middle of the map with a furball. Look at EC maps, where even with one airfield, the players spread out because of where the objectives are. If you dont add more spread out objectives such as AI clashes and bases, air RB no matter how you change spawning is doing anything. 16 vs 16 is also just atrocious in toptier. The sheer number of AAMs and aircraft in one small area of the map is simply absurd and there isnt any way someone can realistically pay attention to all of that and react accordingly.

Like someone else said earlier in the thread, adding ARB EC as an event and balancing it based on player feedback and Gaijin’s progression interests, then fully implementing it would be great for the highest tiers of air RB.

I really don’t see why you are so against making changes from the rest of air rb tiers, like props and subsonic jets. Toptier does not work the same, if you separate from your team you are getting multiple enemies behind you shooting powerful AAMs.

All i’m getting out of your posts is that you don’t understand top tier air RB’s various flaws and how they can be fixable. You also dont seem to realise that toptier is not the same as lower and middle tiers. Your suggestions and opinions seem almost entirely against significantly changing toptier ARB. You clearly aren’t qualified to represent the opinions of the playerbase.

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not saying that since start,… you’re out of why i’m asking excuses for.

and for the rest - everyone have it’s POV, and can differ from other - this is no excuse for categorizing and/or being insulting when shown wrong (that’s what happenned)

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Stealth nerfing 😆

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