I’ve seen a rise in this trend (maybe I am just noticing this now), especially in SA servers. A group of players who know each other create a controlled lobby in air simulator battles, they have their own kill farm / bombing session going on and if someone else joins and kills one of them, a teammate will spectate the new guy and keep revealing their information to the enemy players over external comms.
This tilts the odds against the genuine player a lot especially in lower tiers where technology required to find enemies are primitive.
Here’s an example in case you guys haven’t encountered this,
_АKULА (ID 87787933) - Possible bot used to host sim lobbies and colludes with enemy players (Archiiiiiii (ID 91879668)).
Flies in a prop bomber for an enemy F-16 to shoot down. As soon as a teammate killed the F-16, crashed, spectated teammates and kept revealing their info to the enemy F-16 (got kicked due to inactivity few times but re-joined and kept sabotaging his teammates).
These two players along with few more seem to almost always play/collude together by seeing their match history.
His only activity in this match was either flying in a prop to be shot down or spectating/sabotaging his teammates.
https://warthunder.com/en/tournament/replay/264115981621427744
I’ve had one more such instance this month with the player RadYu (ID 137240835) and his alt account/bot “Cold mood” (ID 181210842). I couldn’t find the replay as it happened a few days back.
People may argue that spectate feature is required to identify possible cheaters but the current player spectate design doesn’t allow you to see their PoV which is essential to identify cheaters. You are required to watch the replay where you can see their PoV and report accordingly as suggested here.
Should the player spectate feature disabled just for simulator battles? Share your opinion guys.
Honestly, at this point the lobby system is doing more harm than good to air sim. While I like being able to choose the map I want to play, and know the exact BR range it allows too much abuse and turns it into the unofficial PvE game mode. I like playing in the 10.0 to 11.7 BR range to avoid the fox3 spam, but it’s literally just 80% or 90% people bombing bases.
Honestly, I can understand those players who try to play PVE. Instead of playing SB PVP battles I play my own missions where I can enjoy sim gameplay since it is nearly impossible to play in SB regime and get satisfaction.
Example: When I play the Su-25SM3, my team is always outnumbered (usually twice) compared to the enemy. On top of that, I’m often matched against advanced fighter jets like the F-16. Since my main interest is hunting ground units (I need to climb) rather than targeting bases, the SB gameplay feels like a nightmare for me.
Su-27 is also no match to many other planes, so I cannot enjoy it in SB regime either.
No surprise some players are looking for the opportunity to try to enjoy the game and gain some profit.
Being able to choose a lobby is actually the Advantage of air sim. Not every plane is designed for pure airfight and not every player loves pure PvP. If I find there are too much greedy fighters hunting my ground-pounding A-10 I would go another lobby. (In fact there’s not much difference between you avoiding fox3 lobbies and PvE bombers avoiding fighter lobies)
Oh, during the F-14 event me and my gang made it a sport to hunt PvE-insistent players trying to avoid us reaching the bases. It certainly gave us a bump for some achievements and we made it kind of a competition between us to see who could get told most to find another server if we wanted to do PvP :P But I am sure glad that event is over.
