Nowadays, top-tier aircraft gameplay is the worst I’ve ever seen

Aircraft gameplay from 9.7 and above is the worst aircraft gameplay I’ve ever experienced in War Thunder. I’m a long-time player, I’ve always played top-tier aircraft, the gameplay that has formed in every aspect is the worst I’ve ever seen. And it’s not because of modern aircraft, but because of Gaijin.

Gaijin is destroying the gameplay by changing aircraft performance, with completely unbalanced BRs, and now we even have useless radars that can’t find absolutely anything. I could list a huge number of aircraft that Gaijin has destroyed in an attempt to “balance” them at certain BRs, but there are so many that I’d probably forget some.

Gaijin needs to stop this habit of trying to balance aircraft by changing their performance, the missiles or now the radar. Ever since I started playing top tier, there are aircraft whose performance I’ve seen changed around 20 times. That’s ridiculous. The aircraft, missile, or radar should be the way it really is in real life, or at least close to it.

For years I’ve been hearing that you need to decompress the BRs, and it always takes an absurdly long time to be fixed. You’re taking way too long to listen to the community.

From 9.7 to 10.7, you have subsonic aircraft fighting supersonic ones, aircraft without flares fighting all-aspect missiles.

From 10.7 to 11.7, you have supersonic aircraft fighting subsonic ones.

From 11.7 to 12.7, you face aircraft whose radars barely work against aircraft with Fox-1 missiles and missiles that can easily hit targets up to 25 km away. Some aircraft at this BR don’t even have RWR, while others have radars that detect aircraft far more easily.

From 12.7 to 13.7, you get aircraft that only have Fox-1 missiles with 20-year-old technology compared to Fox-3 missiles.

And now at top tier, you’ve nerfed the radars of some aircraft so grotesquely that you can barely find any targets, even when aircraft are right next to you. There’s an enormous difference between PESA and AESA radars compared to mechanical radars.

Not to mention that the spotting system at top tier is garbage. Aircraft at this level shouldn’t even need spotting. Top-tier gameplay boils down to whether you are spotted or not. Once you’re spotted, the entire enemy team finds you and starts missile spamming.

For me, playing aircraft has become very discouraging. Fourth-generation aircraft were the generation I was most excited to play, and it has been a terrible and demoralizing experience. I actually prefer playing top-tier aircraft in ground battles now.

There are aircraft that you’ve ruined to the point of being unplayable.

I believe you urgently need to decompress the BRs and make a drastic change. The game is completely unbalanced.

And you should focus on keeping aircraft performance realistic instead of changing performance in exchange for “balance.” The focus should be on BR changes. This BR limitation that you impose on the game is preventing you from focusing on realism. Being realistic has always been the essence of War Thunder, and I feel that Gaijin is increasingly losing sight of that.

3 Likes

That’s probably one of the best jet BRs when it comes to balance. Uptiers aren’t anywhere near as terrible compared to any other jet BR outside of some 8.0/8.3 jets.

100%. It only leads to more steamrolls, and it’s accelerated by airspawns and 16v16 matches. I wouldn’t be against reduced makers for 13.0+ (no exact plane ID/distance until 5km away, and shared spotting/all markers have a max range of 10km).

They had a perfect chance to add 14.7 with the introduction of the AESA Typhoons and Su-30SM2. Both of those and the 2 Rafales should’ve been 14.7 when the update came out, but Gaijin thinks it’s fair to add upgraded planes at the same BR as their predecessors.

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It depends on which plane you’re playing, but overall it’s unbalanced. And now they’ve put a MiG-25 against subsonic aircraft. Do you really think that’s balanced?

2 Likes

The map rotation absolutely sucks at 7.7+ in my experience recently spading all three R2Y2s.

Most of them are functionally identical to each other, and other than a bit less engine power due to the Pyrenees map being higher in altitude, they play out basically identically.

Oh, and Falklands being bugged to where killing the ground units doesn’t bleed any tickets is just the icing on the cake. So if you have something running to orbit nobody can hope to catch you’re just SoL on that map. Further decorations on that cake are the player-grade AI naval ships being seemingly immune to all aircraft weaponry - I have seen HE bombs with short fuses either bounce off and then explode harmlessly above the ship, explode with instant fuse and “non-penetration” them, use an AP bomb which does very little damage at all, and finally torpedoes also seem to not work at all.

These types of games aren’t designed around balance, the are designed around frustrating you into climbing the ladder to the very top - the only place you can’t get up-tiered.

And the quickest way to do that? Buy over priced premiums!

They absolutely don’t want you settling into the BR bracket and not spending money.

3 Likes

Imho Arb needs at least 1.0 br stretch. In grb if you are uptiered, you at least has a chance to shoot back. In high tier arb for 80% of times you do not even have a chance to fight back if radar and missiles are seriously underpowered, just like how Iranian Tomcat used to be when fully downtiered.

They should had stoped with planes that has fox1, but greed. Nowdays top plane gameplay is pure garbage.