Current AIR RB cannot support modern Fox-2’s already, ngl
1 Like
It’s requested by people who people who never played it back when it was available. As someone who did, I can tell you it’s a garbage game mode that should never see the light of day again. I have been so bored playing this game than playing ARB EC.
He is correct. You are starting from the assumption that you and Gaijin (and all other players) want the same thing out of a game mode.
Skilled players, especially fighter players, want smaller matches so they can utilise their skills to have an impact. Fewer crazy variables going around and things all happening at the same time. Gaijin, however, is perfectly fine with the chaos: it slows player progression, doesn’t make the experience overly frustrating for less skilled players, allows players in non meta or stock aircraft to be able to do something without being immediately singled out.
Their POV for the mode is different than yours. Different priorities follow.
RB EC is extremely unlikely to come back for the same reason why they decided to remove it. The moment people started focusing on how much RP you could print with it etc, the mode was doomed. It breaks the intended limitations on research and progression while being way more accessible than sim (and thus available to more players). It won’t return unless they find a way to massively nerf its rewards and still think it’s worth having at that point.
2 Likes
Because it’s inherently unbalanced and the queue times were horrendous.
1 Like
Speak for yourself. I loved playing EC in Sim despite barely being able to fly in Sim. A properly implemented EC gamemode in Air RB, that made positioning relevant again, and provided a variety of different objectives, would be a god send, and might actually take the meta away from the horrible giant furball at sub 1km altitude we have currently.
Also, it was trialed long before missiles were a thing, let alone BVR combat, or even Pheonixes. Flying the distances you have to in EC in prop planes can be a bit tedious, but in supersonic jets that can engage targets more than 20km away, you’ll have plenty to do on the much shorter commute in.
3 Likes
The thing is, WT is a different game now. There is very clearly a demand for an EC style mode, or sim without sim controls or a cockpit view.
It should be tried as a limited event, and if it gets positive feedback it should be implemented permanently in some way.
3 Likes
that’s all ridiculous, because the gameplay became horrible the literal same day they changed it to 16v16.
Nothing else changed, the game was fine and workable, they didn’t even introduce any new planes with that update, and then suddenly boom, gameplay is awful.
all of the things you mentioned there would not have suddenly changed with a snap of the fingers. It was only the change of players per team.
2 Likes
The whole roadmap is a nothing burger. No EC RB, no SAM’s, no AWAC’s, real ground targets for air battles, etc. No fixing the god-awful top tier ground battles maps, no regenerative steering, fixing the broken armor penetration code they keep breaking, etc. And of course no mention of improving the anti-cheat… Instead we get these minor changes that should’ve been in place from the start (fuel slider, how is a user defined integer hard to implement, a beginner in C++ could code this…) that aren’t rather difficult to implement. Overall, not surprised, but still extremely disappointed by the absolute laziness.
1 Like
Well, … you won’t understand, that changes would have been great if Players weren’t dumb rush mid map ones,…
But it seems i can’t change your mind from,… then i’m not going to reply more until you understand some of the previous points, and why those behaviors makes the game hard to play with a 16vs16 teams,… (btw previous ones were 12vs12 and it came down from 16vs16 which was previously in game for about 7 years)
1 Like
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.
2 Likes
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.
2 Likes
I’m admitting that PLAYERS are Broken,… not the game.
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,…
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.
1 Like
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.
2 Likes
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.
3 Likes
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)
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.
3 Likes
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.
4 Likes
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.
2 Likes