This is the reason for SB being not popular.
1 Like
That is why real PvE is the perfect solution. Besides interesting gameplay PvE can provide anti-lobby rooms, since you cannot agree with bots.
My PvE mission that I posted before is hard to complete for many players even at the stage of klling ground units. At the next step you should fight against F-16s that are equipped with 9L AAMs. This step is also hard for the majority of players. Even in RB regime.
Nice essay…
Sim rewards should still be rewarded the same as the other modes.
And it deserves to have regular development and upkeep.
1 Like
Sim rewards are probably on-par with the rewards rate in other game modes.
But the fact that a lot of people are doing some form of exploitation and cherry picking…it means that things are heavily weighted towards that kind of play style.
Just improving PvP rewards means that people would just exploit it with fake accounts.
no
Excellent counterpoint to everything I have shown.
So, what is your solution?
There really isn’t an elegant one unless you implement some kind of matchmaker like all of the other game modes have and remove the ability for players to create lobbies or leave games until they find one that suits them.
What is matchmaker in RB?
Skill difference in sim is much bigger than in RB. I am not sure it is possible to do matchmaker for this.
I have one. It is real PvE.
Matchmaker is system for finding games in Air RB. You do not get to browse lobbies or BR range to have a preferred matchup against lower BR planes or worse players; it’s essentially randomized.
And what counts as real PvE? If the mode is too easy and the rewards are too high…then it will just attract farmers looking for shortcuts. Or if they make the rewards too low then the farmers will still just abuse Sim economy to get ahead faster.
It is possible to participate in random rooms in SB.
It will not solve the problem.
Try to play my mission and then you can decide, if it is easy or not. Especially if you play it on USSR planes.
In real PvE you cannot agree with bots, hence no easy farm for farmers.
Even killing nearly defenceless bots can be a challenge.
Everything depends on mission and scenario design.
The problem isn’t the ability to participate in random rooms. It’s the ability to cherry pick your room and create your own that is the issue.
It only takes 4 people total to start a new lobby. And if your goal is to farm rewards…if a PvP player shows up and starts to ruin the process…you just leave and find a new lobby. Or you just engineer your own lobby that PvP players will not join by picking a 128km map for props or something similar.
Well, PvP players do not go to random rooms for some reason, though it is real matchmaker.
Again, I know what you mean, but if the goal is to increase SB popularity, then it is impossible to solve it just by forbidding custom rooms to cancel farmers sessions.
If the majority of players have K/D = 0-0.2, you cannot expect much from this regime.
PvP players have their own methods of self regulating what rooms they go to as well. The rooms that are predominantly occupied by PvE-only players are made in such a way as to make PvP in those rooms be unappealing…or there are just so many of them in the first place that most PvE players are able to game the system.
For instance it doesn’t really take that many PvP players to empty out a lobby that is just Phantoms that are bombing…but all of those guys that leave the game just split to the other dozen or so PvE centered lobbies.
Having entire battle rating ranges that are basically unplayable except for on certain days is a big reason that the mode is not popular. Who wants to join a Vietnam game in a MiG-17 just to find out that the only 2 players on the enemy team are bombers that are faster than you and are just running straight back and forth at bomb points?
And this isn’t even explicitly a PvE thing. The PvP community also has issues with making the game unpopular and unplayable. Playing MiG-17 against Ariete is equally, if not more so, unpleasant than just chasing bombers. The Ariete is straight up paying for a massive advantage over every plane at the same bracket and you are very likely to run into a try-hard on any day that it gets to fight in a down tier.
This kind of behavior isn’t even limited to spamming the most overpowered thing for the day. A lot of sim players will self-select lobbies based on what side has the most experienced players. Want to fly the MiG-17 but not get farmed by Ariete try-hards? Join a game where the try hards are on your team and you get to noob farm the other side. If try hards join the enemy team…just quit the game and find a new one.
Stuff like this happens all the time and pretty much every experienced player will do it to one degree or another.
The fact that the average kills per fly out is so low just goes to show that the way that most people predominantly play Air SB is as a PvE mode. Even bother gunners on an AFK plane would average a higher kills per spawn than 0.2 per fly out in most cases.
1 Like
Well, many players are looking to kill PvE players on purpose.
Exactly! Skill difference + balance problems = unpopular regime.
Remove this 0-.2 bin and you will get the same picture. Remove next bin - the same. And so on…
This cannot be explained by farmers, but with the fact that the majority of the players play SB as prey for pro players.
This happens only during marathons and right after update release. Outside of these times the number of SB players declines drastically, demonstrating the purpose of SB regime for the majority of players.
Most PvP players do not care to chase the 1-2 jet bombers across the entirety of Vietnam at middle jet tiers.
Having 0.0 - 0.2 kills per fly out is not just a skill difference though… it’s a huge population that does not do any PvP what-so-ever.
Ther are not many “pro” SB players.
Out of the entire population that was tracked over the past month…there is only 4,409 players across the entire population that average 1 kill or more per sortie. That is out of a population that is just over 93,000 players. Just the ability to go out and get a single kill per fly out would put you in the top 5% of players.
We are not currently in the midst of grinding an event and the stats that I have posted reflect the past 30 days of activity. We are well past the F-14IRAF grind as well so these numbers reflect the current state of the game.
Furthermore the two videos that I posted earlier are content creators that are advertising the current sim economy as a means of grinding out a tech tree. Those videos aren’t even specifically for gaming the grinding events which makes the whole rewards situation even more skewed.
1 Like
crazy… SIM “PvP lovers” are now asking for restriction on the players’ freedom to choose a lobby, only because many people play in a PvE way that the game totally allows, but which “PvP lovers” dislike. The SIM grinding efficiency is already worse than RB (for most planes). Are “PvP lovers” asking to nerf it more?
Stop that. I find many “PvP lovers” don’t realize that SIM is a PvPvE mode, not your own PvP mode. Nearly half planes in the tech tree are not fighters, which means the INTENDED gameplay of them is exactly to do objectives, instead of getting air kills. (Your point that bombers should get >0.2 kd is so ridiculous lmao)
1 Like
It’s not AirSB. It’s Sim EC.
When there will be Realistic EC, then it will be comparable.
You can compare Ground RB and Ground SB rewards now.
No matter you consider them comparable or not, most players will still choose a fastest way to grind. And not everyone can play the game totally “for fun”, before they unlock their vehicles.
I am not asking for anything. I am just pointing out the complexity of all of the people that think that increasing sim rewards is simple.
What part of the intended gameplay loop is leaving the lobby and finding a new one when a PvP player makes a PvE environment no longer uncontested?
Because this is something that happens all of the time. Once PvP players start intercepting bombers and attackers and defending objectives…you know what the PvE players do? They leave the game and go find a new one where they can play more-or-less uncontested PvE. Or they just make rigged lobbies from the start.
2 Likes