this is exactly what i mean has been many matches were i will try to employ strategy just to have entire enemy team wiped out in the first merge down middle of match wasting my time
you kind of hitting on my point
Blockquote Currently Air RB is a mess and basically just Air AB+ with higher rewards. This attracts players with zero understanding about or passion for aerial warfare into this mode.
because of this most matches are just a zerg down middle of map first teams missiles to land wins there is no strategy just rinse and repeat
The TDM / furball issue is a result of low skill players demanding instant action. The reason why Air RB maps are way too small for experienced pilots is because they are a minority - and gaijin caters the majority.
There was enough in-depth game play until 2018/19 - the player base shifted (covid) massively from full-time pilots to part-time pilots (=tankers) - Mach 2 jets & respawning bases (May 2020) killed the mode.
There are hundreds / thousands of threads / posts regarding RB EC buried with the deletion of the old forum.
The gaijin guys are not stupid - if there would be a significant demand RB EC would be in the game right now.
It is no secret that there are usually no decent prop pilots playing Ground RB. The few exceptions like the fellow player @Loofah (just as an example) play there for for other reasons.
What most people simply forget is that the name tags prevents quite effectively cheating in Air RB. The majority of cheats in markerless modes are focusing on identification and aiming.
As a basic rule:
Missing markers (outside SB modes) favor rookies way more than veteran players - the absence of markers kills the situational awareness advantage of vets. The increase of bad weather in the recent years is no accident, same as 16 vs 16 and way too low contrails - all of these measures increase the chances of rookies to score.
It is no excel sheet - it is a flow chart.
A toddler can ambush and kill a clueless enemy aircraft in Ground RB - killing an enemy who is aware of your presence is way more challenging. Especially if you are in a disadvantageous position and/or outnumbered.
The idea of situational awareness is centered around being sure about your relative and absolute positioning vs potential enemies. the capabilities of their aircraft and their pilot skill - and, ofc, the enemy aircraft you might have to face.
If you can’'t escape from a rat plane like a Merlin Spit (or A6M, or I-16) you messed up your positioning - and you have to pay the price for that.
Strategy and tactics require the time willingness and intellectual ability to learn.
As written above: Gaijin made Air RB to a grinding tool with basically zero entry barriers. The game mode in its current state looks exactly like majority of the player base want it to be - a plain vehicle based shooter.
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They did say they working on something, or reviewing it or something not that long ago. So there is hope. But given how neglected ASB is, yeah, im not holding my breath for an RB EC
Air RB is not designed with multiple spawns in mind, so it would not work well. Would be even worse if people now required a lineup because no tech tree is prepared for that.
Game changed as it got more popular, shocker.
Thats naive way of thinking, since name tags do abaolutely nothing if cheater is past certain spotting distance from a plane.
Besides, a anticheat system and proper enforcement of rules is more pernament solution to such problem.
Its arcadey feature. A 360° degree automatic detection tool that is active at all times and detracts from the game by outright denying ambush tactics or disengaging.
Arcade air has enemy nametags, but not realistic ground nor sim.
You said it yourself
And thats why realistic battles need arcade training wheels that spot the planes for the pilot?
No one but you is talking about rat planes, and i do agree that if player makes mistake he should lose.
You have very clearly very snobbish attitude towards ARB and you made that very clear. Respond if you want, but im not going to engage in discussion with you any further.
Because the majority of ARB player base isn’t interested in changes or adding a new mode at all. The only thing they are interested in is to earn the most personal ressources with less effort.
You can add as many modes as you want. They testing them and decide the easiest mode to grind and destroy it with their behaviour. The rest of the modes you have to wait half a day for a match.
Think about it:
Half your team want to bomb, an action without outcome to the battle itself.
Every single battle several bombing dudes crashes on purpose after bombing or to deny a kill.
Most of your team dies in furball or headon.
And so on…
Because the mode is so bad? No, they are maximizing their earning/time.
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This is avoidable if they just use EC spawn & mission logic.
In EC, you pay full repair cost before spawning regardless of what happens and can respawn as many times as you can afford. This works because victory is not achieved through team wipes, but successful completion of enough objectives (air kills, ground kills, bases destroyed, naval kills, air superiority point captures, A.I air kills or defences to drain the enemy team of tickets faster than they drain yours. This heavily favours ground-attack aircraft that can get in, destroy the ground battles quickly and get out to rearm and try again - Il2s, P-47s and so on). I’ve lost games of bf109f4s vs a gaggle of il2s, p-47s and iirc a20s despite us dominating the dogfights because they just split up and went ham and we couldnt kill them fast enough to save our ground troops (spawn camping would have worked but that’s unsportsmanlike.)
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As much as I agree with you, it seems that having two modes to pick from abd choosing the opposite of the meta slaves would aleviate the issue a bit.
Not to mention you could tie EC rewards to things like full reward for base bombing if you land back on the airfield etc.
Thing is a new mode would divide the playerbase more than any BR changes and could lead to more compression if queue times go up significatively for any of the 2 modes.
I’d be up for EC tho but I just reckon it’s probably not on Gaijin’s best interest.
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The game lowered his standards to facilitate rookies - yes. But a main part of criticism by long term players is that the game play in Air RB is basically the same as in the years before - and gaijin has not adapted their design philosophy to way more powerful weapon systems.
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What you completely miss is the point that every passionate pilot is aware of that the competition in the segment of aerial warfare is rather limited and is either more designed like SB or AB. Air RB is in its current form quite attractive as it combines positive aspects of both and offers a rather unique experience.
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The issue is that the ability to control an aircraft with MnK was always attractive for non-pilots and together with the strong shift in player demographics towards tank players the game changed its character.
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If the majority of players in Air RB are just part time pilots, see Air RB just as low skill SL/RP grinding tool and the purpose of the game as grinding a TTs to aircraft they can’t handle - but are willing and able to invest a hell of money - it is no wonder why the game looks like it is right now.
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In addition the map design evolved backwards - legendary maps like Norway or Operation Iskra offered a broad variety of targets for all plane classes on very large maps and allowed tactical game play - with 1 hour long matches. The newer maps focus just on optics.
This statement demonstrates why you have troubles with playing props - the markers are just a very powerful additional tool to assess enemy energy states. Being aware of where all enemies are (or might be) - without having markers - requires spotting of dots, contrails and engine sounds.
So having a basic awareness which kind of threats are located where keeps you alive - the marker ranges are at least in good weather sufficient to stay out of enemy gun/cannon fire. This awareness requires a certain level of experience.
Therefore cheating in prop Air RB is rather pointless as players have zero long range weapons. For jet Air RB the avionics are (in theory) designed to help you to make informed decisions.
I am not sure why you as MnK player feel the need to assess markers in Air RB as “arcady feature”.
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There is no automatic 360° detection tool at all times as marker ranges are dependent on crew skill, the position of the involved aircraft and the direction of the player view - and bad weather (=dusk/dawn/thunderclouds) kills markers, so you can get in gun range and kill enemies without triggering a marker.
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In addition - you can still ambush even highly experienced prop pilots by attacking from the blind spot. Almost nobody looks direct above - and gliding in from high alt with engine off (no contrail, no sound) performing a high speed dive attack is the classic ambush strategy.
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Disengaging has nothing to do with markers - either you are faster or not. The only difference is the shared spotting
Your references to Air AB, Ground RB or SB modes shows clearly that you failed to understand the differences of AB and RB and compare it to a niche mode like SB.
See above. Using a MnK with an autopilot (instructor) to control an aircraft is the mother of all “training wheels”…
The whole idea behind offering the modes AB, RB and SB is that realism should increase - in relation to the requirements for virtual combat.
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So the fellow ground RB players face primarily the challenge of positioning, correct target identification and aiming for the right spots - that’s why Ground AB has markers for all, Ground RB just for friendlies and Ground SB no markers.
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Air AB allows playing with simplified physics (FM) and is centered around multiple spawn options. The markers with lead indicators allow easy identification and firing on enemies.
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In theory Air RB is circled around controlling the aircraft and the necessity to fight with a more realistic flight model and to manage engine power (and fuel) and limited ammo in a single spawn mode which requires to use your aircraft wisely.
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Unfortunately mouse aim kills the controlling the aircraft part to a large degree as MnK players fly basically on autopilot (called instructor). The target & threat identification process is supported by markers not replaced. The MK I eyeball is still your main weapon.
I wrote earlier that currently Air RB is just Air AB+ as a large chunk of the player base play it like AB, no strategy, no game plan, furballing and infinite head-on loops - just with higher rewards than AB.
The current game design with 16 vs 16 lobbies, bad weather and rather inexperienced players on average requires below BRs with radar equipment markers by default - if your enemies don’t care if they die or not you get chased even below friendlies - meaning experienced players make a risk assessment whilst rookies go all in.
You mentioned a Spitfire - a classic rat plane if Merlin driven.
Maybe i am just tired of people debating about or asking for things they don’t understand or have a least a very narrow view on things.
Jokes aside - the idea of a forum is mutually support and exchanges about common interests. This irequires the willingness to reflect own positions based on deviating opinions. People tend to reject deviating opinions as soon as they run out of arguments which supports their own pov.
I have a certain level of understanding of your pov on certain aspects of Air RB - but this does not mean i have to share them.
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I appreciate your feedback - but i am not sure if your understanding of parity has considered the complete different game play between the two RB modes.
- One major aspect why there are no enemy markers for (air) targets in Ground RB is to give the guys in SPAAs (outside radar guided BRs) a challenge to identify and shoot down enemy aircraft.
But the main difference is way more obvious:
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Aircraft play the role of “power-ups” in Ground RB. The conceptual advantage of aircraft vs Ground units is a result of the way gaijin decided to make aircraft playable - the artificially increased accuracy based on mouse aim allows way too easy kills vs more or less helpless players in Ground vehicles.
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The popularity of Ground RB is centered around the involvement of aircraft - adding markers would severely hamper classic revenge bombing - based on totally unrealistic spotting mechanics which allow way too easy target identification of ground units.
In other words:
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The difficulty increase of target identification in tanks (due to missing of red markers) from AB to RB helps absolute mediocre players to score A2G kills.With red markers just for enemy aircraft (whilst flying an aircraft) the whole CAS topic would be solved in 2 weeks as just the total absence of markers allows non-pilots to score A2G kills.
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The difficulty increase of AB to RB in aircraft is based on controlling the aircraft and positioning yourself at the six of your opponent; the red marker is just an additional tool as depending on the actual marker range the fight can be avoided (“fight or flee”) or not.
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There can’t be any parity between the modes as the player skill is based on their passion level for aircraft or tanks. So no serious pilot has any kind of fun bombing or strafing other players in tanks - and the hardcore tanker sees aircraft as necessary evil he has to fight or to use to defend his team.
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Every plane without the necessary performance to perform surprise attacks (=speed and the ability for one-pass kills) and the performance to extend has by definition a reduced value.
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Attackers / strike aircraft are by definition “gunfood” as they sacrifice their positioning vs aerial threats in exchange for the possibility to attack ai ground units.
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It is no secret that gaijin (and most of the player base) sees Air RB as a plain PvP shooter (ultimate goal according to gaijin: Kill other players, check [s]kill bonus). So bomber game play above BR 3.0 requires to be way smarter than the average fighter player. That gaijin sees bombers as plain food is covered in multiple threads.
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I do agree that these ai planes and their shared “borg” spotting are annoying as hell. That’s why i enjoy playing on legacy maps like Poland, Stalingrad or Mozdok as there are no ai planes.
But:
The issues you describe for “weaker” plane classes are just a result of the decline of player skill.
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No experienced pilot attacks bombers if he don’t have to - they are not decisive regarding the outcome and the risk of getting damaged or killed is depending on the level of awareness of the bomber pilot way too high - as your main threat are enemy fighters.
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With attackers you are on a few maps forced to take them out (like Tunisia) but like with bombers - the fighter players not climbing and looking for “cheap” kills of attackers are usually not good enough to fight enemy fighters.
The changes in BRs (in the last 5-6 years) are mainly a result of zero skill pilots flooding the mode - and gaijins approach to set BRs on plain average results - and are imho not even remotely related to markers. So the more rookies use highly capable aircraft and suck - the lower the BR and vice versa.
The other part is related to the wt meta which favours climb, turn & speed.
In other words:
BRs reflect the Air RB meta, the SL/RP earnings on average and plain wrong decisions by gaijin (12 G turns😂) or economic aspects (premium) - and do not reflect the actual raw plane performance.
Average ARB team strategy:
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