[POLL] What was done wrong? Air RB's issues and what needs to be revisited and changed

Game Discussion Realistic Battle
,
1

As it stands, ARB remains plagued by numerous issues, some terrible and some much less noticeable. Currently, i believe the top worst issues in ARB are the inconsistency and unreliability of spotting, weather conditions, as well as everyone’s favorite: BR compression.

Spotting
Spotting is the number one biggest issue surrounding air rb, as it does not promote skilled gameplay at all. It’s beyond infuriating to start a fight with someone after scanning the area nearby to ensure it’s safe, then shortly after beginning it you get jumped by people who were not spotted whatsoever that you have no way of countering. There is NOTHING that current spotting brings to benefit the game, instead dragging it down to a terribly low level.

Does spotting need an update/rework?
  • Yes
  • No
0 voters

Right now, spotting is an inconsistent mess that seems to rely on randomness. Removing it wouldn’t work because it is far too difficult to visually identify aircraft, especially in the cloud-spam conditions common in the game. Personally, i believe that the “shared” spotting, where players spotted by one person are spotted for all is BAD for gameplay. It discourages communication and skilled fights between players, instead culminating in a huge ball of chaos at low altitude in the center of the map.

To fix the inconsistency issue, spotting should be guaranteed within a specific range of your aircraft to improve situational awareness. In a game about having good awareness of your surroundings, the inconsistency kills off enjoyable gameplay. The range would ideally vary between ranks due to the speed and armament differences as the game moves on, but if all must remain the same, spotting should be guaranteed within 15 km of your aircraft while looking towards an enemy. If the enemy aircraft is not in your field of vision, it should be spotted at a lower range of 4 km to promote use of the camera key.

Is shared spotting satisfactory?
  • Yes
  • No
0 voters
Is current spotting too inconsistent?
  • Yes
  • No
0 voters

Weather conditions
The light clouds at dusk does look especially nice for screenshots, but for gameplay? Not so well. It currently tanks the range of spotting down to a horrendous level, dots of aircraft are even harder to see, and clouds covering a majority of the map removes a huge amount of potential in a game because you cannot see anyone. Clouds consistently covering much of the map is unrealistic and a MAJOR issue. Clouds should instead be restricted to a much higher minimum altitude above ground level as well as be limited to a much lighter cover.

Are clouds currently excessive?
  • Yes
  • No
0 voters

Matchmaker and BR compression
This issue has been discussed an absurd amount and is highly requested by the general playerbase. I’m unsure why this STILL has not seen any changes with how much the players demand a change. Currently, i feel like the most compressed range in the game is from 7.0 to 10.7, due to the rapidly increasing performance of airframes and missiles in such a small section of BRs.

Anything with more than 15 G of pull does NOT belong at a BR lower than 10.0. Full stop. The amount of flareless aircraft being destroyed by missiles they have no chance of dodging is absurd and needs to be fixed immediately. I’m using the A-4N Ayit and MiG-21SMT as examples of aircraft that sit at far too low BRs due to the way the game is balanced. I consistently see the thread for BR change feedback be full of posts with 50, 75, even 100+ likes and still be completely ignored despite the huge support for a change. The player cannot be balanced and their performance should not be the driving factor behind balancing the game.
I propose BR changes be first suggested by the players for a short period of about 2 days in a thread on this forum, as it more accurately reflects the opinions of the players on balance. After this first period, a spreadsheet containing the changes decided to go through is released and a feedback thread is created for final inputs and changes to the spreadsheet. These must be considered based on the support shown by the players, not their in-game performance

Generally, compression is something i have no reason to speak on because of the large quantity of threads with compression as their main topic, but the BRs should extend to 17 or even 18. I don’t see why it’s so difficult to do this.

Is the way BRs are currently decided acceptable?
  • Yes
  • No
0 voters

These are just the major issues i see in ARB consistently. There are of course more, however i didn’t want to make an unnecessarily long post.

6 Likes
2

If Gaijin made an easy way to communicate plane locations that doesn’t rely on using the chat, and encountering language barriers, I’d be more open to them adding your proposal. Right now, I think we could just add a max limit of X km for all spotting, while also making spotting more consistent and better.

Gaijin should have to give a reason why those changes weren’t added, without just saying “out statistics show that…”

Objective stats and Gaijins stats should also play a part. The playerbase is quite unintelligent sometimes, and they let their own biases get in the way of objective balance. It’s how we got the F-15E with new engines being undertiered when it arrived, or how people want the 2S38 to be 11.3, despite it being considerably worse than the HSTVL.

16.0 is very easily achievable, but that requires gaijin to consult the community and put actual effort into decompression. It’s unreasonable right now.

4 Likes
3

clouds are sometimes very extreme and spotting aircraft after the update has been very buggy. enemies inside the furball are not coming up with tags at all at times and even with radar or IR locks they can lose it making hunting the last guy next to impossible

1 Like
4

True, I feel like the radio messages are too vague currently.

Yes, to eliminate bias. It should of course take into account what we reply with in the feedback threads. It feels like too much goes ignored.

5

Spotting:
I personally think the current spotting system is way too random (my maxed F-16 pilot somehow can’t see the Su-27 rigjt in front of them) but collective spotting sorta works. Realistically, your pilots would be calling to each other the whereabouts of aircraft, but not that accurate. Instead of the perfect deadon marker it shoukd be a large square that the plane is somewhere in. We should also get datalink at higher tiers, making it more precise without sacrificing much

BR Compression:
BR compression is not exclusive to ARB and Ground needs it heavily, but realistically many aircraft currently are in hard places where they can’t move down cause they’ll be OP but they can’t stay where they are cause they’re DOA. Realistically, Gaijoob could stretch the BRs up to at least 16.0 easily, and eliminate many of those issue planes by now having them be effectively where a X.85 would be

1 Like
6

4km feels far too generous for out-of-periphery spotting - it’s sufficient to give ample warning about someone trying to engage in hit and run, boom and zoom attacks well before they initiate their attack and start defensive flying to nullify their ability to aggress on their own.

1.5 or 2 km for periphery spotting seems far more reasonable if we maintain “If you look at someone directly with mouse look, they’re guaranteed to be spotted in 15 km distance” because you can still defend properly by just keeping your head on a swivel.

One thing that concerns me is -

are we talking about aircraft rendering or red markers?

Aircraft should always render as a black dot regardless of peripherial or direct vision provided you aren’t blocked by a cloud. Planes disappearing and reappearing due to viewing distance and weird shenanigans is one of the most annoying parts of ASB and remain annoying in ARB if you try to spot without markers for advance information.

For shared spotting

I think we should have an improved version of air alert that in RB calls out “Hostile, grid square X, Altitude Y” AND makes their marker flash like current shared spotting.

For markerless modes (GRB, ASB), instead it should be “Aircraft! X degrees (FAR/NEAR/CLOSE) from MY GRIDSQUARE and Above/Below from my altitude”
(so AIRCRAFT, FAR180 C6, above 3 km.) Notably, it does not identify hostile or friendly. It simply indicates you spotted someone to request IFF.

FAR/NEAR/CLOSE should scale on the map’s gridsquare size. If 2 or more gridsquares (16 or 32km) - FAR, if 1 gridsquare (8 or 16) - NEAR - if same gridsquare (under 8 or 16) - CLOSE

Degrees are given in absolute bearing - meaning, assume our plane is pointed NORTH and measure the angle between north and the unknown aircraft.

7

I agree with most but as for the spotting system the BR’s/ranks also need to be taken into account as remember 2km at a lower tier is ok and still gives you time where as top tier 2km will pass in seconds due to the speed of the planes, whether they can do the spotting based on the planes or BR’s/ranks I dont know but feels like it is still just purely for the lower ranks.

8

While I sided with the majority, I don’t think the spotting system should be the top priority or is the main problem with ARB. In my opinion it’s just a symptom. I agree that a spotting system that was design with WW2 prop planes in mind isn’t that well suited for mach 2 capable aircraft with 60km range missiles I still think there are more important issues to fix.
When there are 32 people in a 50x50km map (in missile firing range as soon as they take off) then even the slightest issue with spotting will be exaggerated. I personally can’t think of an alternative without straight up doing it the way it’s in sim battles.

Clouds, while extremely annoying, can make for an interesting mechanic. ARB would be way worse if it had absolutely no clouds 100%. They just need to me made slightly less common and add more variety to the patterns. Also, them being client side is ridiculous and that needs to change immediately.

Matchmaker and BR compression are the biggest points here, I think.
The entire +/- 1 and balancing aircraft on the principle of “it dominates in a downtier but struggles in an uptier” is extremely dysfunctional in reality as some planes in specific BRs and nation end up with a 80/20 up/downtier ratio. Why do I have to struggle in 80% of my matches because my plane happens to be super strong in the other 20%. On top of that the range is completely bogus. Numerous times I’ve had matches where my team is, for example, exclusively 10.0 and 10.3 aircraft and the enemy has four 11.0 aicraft. Gee, I sure wonder which team will have an easier time. And this seems like an easy fix. An algorithm to make sure both teams have the same average BR shouldn’t be hard.
Also also, at pretty much every BR range there are certain vehicles that ruin the experience because it’s way too undertiered. No matter what you play, there will always be a “nemesis” aircraft that you feel like you shouldn’t be facing.

However, despite all this, what I would place as the number one issue is the gamemode itself. Currently it just feels like Air Arcade but with one life. The maps are small and boring, teams are way too large, objectives are nonexistent and only encourage passive playstyles and it all ends up just being TDM.
A proper game mode with outcome influencing objectives and appropriate maps for them where all aircraft can fulfill their role is the number one thing ARB needs right now.

1 Like
9

You guys really think there is any hope Gaijin will follow a single idea of us?

How many threads are written about decompression?
Result: 8.3/8.7/9.0 planes are pushed into early jets and 10.7 planes are pushed into 9.3.
Imo the horde of new unexperienced players ruined Gaijin’s way to adjust BRs by winrates.

We wanted smaller lobbies so hard…the implemented option for that is subjectively useless.
The only way to get small lobbies is playing US/japanese props late at night to get pacific maps.

Weather? It feels like climate change 2.0. 80% of the games are full with clouds even at BRs no plane would takeoff in real life.

Matchmaker. I played more than 100 battles in Yak15P last week. More than 50% of 6.0-7.0 against US they had F80/84 while my team had no 7.0. For evidence i switched to 7.0 of other nations here and there, guess what. The lobby was filled with them but uptiers.

4 Likes
10

This is biggest reason why I stopped playing Jet RB(11.7+) games.

Sim is quite fair cuz it doesn’t have markers.

1 Like
11

SIr another ARB poll post has hit the forums

12

There is some truth in this - but imho “interesting mechanic” is way too polite - at least at prop BRs the combination of clouds and reduced / non existent spotting ranges alters the outcome of matches to a large degree.

Yes, it is a challenge to have clouds - but too much is just too much. On certain maps with thunderstorm clouds and/or dusk/dawn weather your situational awareness is severely limited.

If you prefer a structured approach to Air RB matches the current situation is highly disturbing.

Even if the sky looks clear and has zero clouds some maps (mainly Pacific maps) have a kind of mist / humidity which does not trigger markers or allows a reliable “dot spotting”.

So you can stalk enemies if you have an ace crew and get even markers up to 8 km - whilst they don’t see your dot and get markers just way below 4 km. I watched dozens of replays (which are showing the markers) confirming this.

One major advantage / disadvantage (depending on your pov) is the comparably high contrail alt (compared to “standard” maps) of ~ 6.500 meters on maps like Saipan or Iwo Jima. From my pov still too low - but this nonsense of contrails at 2-3 km alt on very cold maps is just a joke.

I just came out of match on Guadalcanal (NA server). Afternoon here in Europe.

Gaijin Entertainment - Single Sign On

And this match shows that too much clouds can completely reverse game play - just based on missing experience of the involved players.

Whilst it is very common to see rookies or just mediocre players scoring 6 kills in stuff like Yak-3s or XP-55s - it is extremely rare to see a guy in a 3.7 US p-47 doing this.

I mean on a map without any clouds and facing experienced pilots the P-47s are just food - especially if they are not side climbing. But in this case the P-47 murdered 6 out of my 9 team mates with a mix of head-ons and 3rd party kills.

So yes interesting - but more a random result based on the weather effects.

1 Like
13

ADD awacs systems solves everything

1 Like
14

They should do what they accidently did for the F-15E release. FIX spotting first ofc but turn off team spotting entirely for top tier and force you to get your own targets

15

My biggest annoyance with clouds is the inconsistency of who has whose marker disappears.

I’ve had a fight a while back in RB where the clouds were ~700 meters low on the RB version of Moresby. I was low on ammo and trying to sneak back by hugging the bottom of the cloud cover. Due to shared spotting, I knew there was an enemy fighter above my intended route, fighting afriendly who I could not help due to being critically dry.

Friendly died, enemy fighter as expected disappeared from shared spotting. This is fine and acceptable in my books. I have meanwhile made absolutely sure to stay hugging the bottom of the cloud layer and follow it. I’ve had no enemy ground vehicles nearby and the enemy fighter was the last one left. Somehow, despite having no direct line of sight he knew my position.

I dodged & reversed but as he flew back into the cloud the marker disappeared very quickly. I changed course to try and lose him. Somehow he had better marker persistence on me than I him (probably keen vision/awareness induced? Or the clientside rendering issue mentioned before) and my attempts at flying smart were nullified by video game logic going against markerless flight experience and real world reports of using clouds to disengage from losing dogfights.

16

I saw this claim - imho a common misconception.

You might wan’t to read this:

17

For me personally the shared spotting with markers is the biggest nonsense in AirRB, especially with the clouds in every map.
My solution is to delete shared markers, but still have the red dots on minimap and hud radar. So you still know there is an enemy but for aiming you have to see him with your own eyes.

1 Like
18

This^
It would work a lot better in a potential ARB EC due to how small regular ARB already is + having an AWACS placed in the area gives players another objective (and a truly defensive one, nobody cares about the bombers at B4) and in addition, it would give Gaijin a reason to implement datalink, even if it’s only squadbased over teambased.

19

surely gaijin have a way of monitoring commentors’ game time, they should be able to filter out who has far less time played than someone that has played for a while and has a better idea of what is needed to change

2 Likes