yea.
genuine question.
we need decompression now more than ever.
last i checked the power gap between the sarh-irs at 13.0 is massive compared to the power gap between 12.0/12.3 and the sarh-irs at 13.0 than the power gap between 12.7/13.0 and 13.7-14.0.
i know gaijin’s probably already thinking of 15.0 for december if we do get 5th gens and flooding the space between 13.7 and 14.3 with arh 4th gen premiums, but can we at least get 14.3 for now? move up every arh slinger between 13.0 and 14.0 1/3rd a br, practically any decompression solution is better than the current brs for 12.3-14.0 from how bad the power between the floor and ceiling is, even a 2/3rds a br max uptier matchmaker would work better than a full uptier for any of the brackets starting at 12.3 to the highest.
Most of the ARH slingers at 13.0 are actually weaker than most of the SARH slingers at 13.0. A few of the ARH slingers could do with some pretty meaningful buffs.
A decompression of 12.0-14.0 is needed in the future, just don’t necessarily expect aircraft with IR/SARH to be a lower BR than all of the ARH slingers. Some may even be at a higher BR.
Personally though, I think 8.0-10.0 is substantially more compressed than 12.0-13.0 is
I think till 6.7 it is ok. 7.0 decompression has to start. It’s ridiculous a Ho 229, Me 262 has to fight La 200, Mig 15 and stuff.
The Sabre/Mig BR change was the biggest joke.
But yeah, I think 7.0/8.0 to 10.0 really needs a full decompression next like we got last year. Though you could move all 13.0s-14.0s up (not just the ARHs) to relieve some of the pressure on the 12.0s
yeah compression is just a pain, along with some kinda dead planes at rank 6 that are honestly rank 5 in performance but lack an air spawn, the balance is a mess and a half rn. Since I play jets mainly I know that early and Korea era jets are just kinda dead because of the possible uptiers
Past the merge, any of the bad airframed ARH platforms simply cannot compete with even the non ARH gen 4s and sometimes even gen 3s. They are a bit in a weird spot, like all the ground strike aircraft with all aspect IRs. They are carried by their weaponry and nothing else. You really never see anyone fly the Harrier FA2/AV8B+/Tornado F.3 late/Kfir C10 etc etc, in my opinion almost every vehicle in the game should have a place to be played.
The Phoenixes are only problematic if you’re not paying attention.
The Fakours are just faster Phoenixes but the same applies.
Every Fox-3 past that needs to be separated from the SARH slingers because even 13.0BR SARHs spend half the match against them having to fly defensively and losing all initiative because 13.7BR and above can sling a Fox-3 and continue to pressure. It’s a serious discrepancy that does need to be remedied. Even hugging the ground to utilize multipath can’t save you.
The only alternative that makes sense is to introduce dynamic BRs for the top tier Fox-3 slingers - Meaning they’re a lower BR depending on whether they’re running Fox-3s or not in their loadout. Only alternative that I can think of that makes sense for the sake of balance because as we all know, Top Tier is very unbalanced between the Haves and the Have Nots.
I’ve been playing War Thunder pretty much since day one.
I luv WW2, so have been mostly a prop player.
During the last month I decided to spade a bunch of 7.0-9.0 jets.
As much as I like flying some of them, I won’t be going back.
You basically hit the -To Battle- button and hope for a ‘rare’ down-tier.
But you’ll mostly get up-tiered, fighting planes that can be 2 times+ faster than you and have missiles (Aim 9b’s force you to maneuver when you don’t want to, even if they don’t get a kill).
It’s basically a ‘pray to the matchmaker’ simulator.
And we all know it’s by design: frustrate players into buying premium time/planes to speed up the grind to BR 14.0 - the only way you can stop being up-tiered.
At least in props I feel like I can still compete in a +1.0 game.
The worst part is that the fix is so simple. Even if they’re too lazy to actually move stuff around and stretch it up to BR 20.0, they could at least change the matchmaker to look for a smaller BR spread — like ±0.3 BR instead of ±1.0 BR.
Dude, what “compression” are you talking about within the same BR? Of course one 9.3 plane will be slightly better than another 9.3, and another one slightly worse — but nobody cares, because they’re still on roughly the same level.
What do you expect? Mirror matches where all 32 players are flying the exact same aircraft? The real compression problem shows up when you get a full uptier or downtier — like flying a subsonic brick from the 1950s with no flares against supersonic missile trucks launching AIM-9J/G/E/D or R-60s.
Sure, increasing the BR cap to 20.0 at top tier would be a better long-term fix and would also decompress same-BR matches a bit. But nobody complains about fighting a different aircraft of the same BR — they complain about 9.0 vs 10.0, 10.0 vs 11.0, 11.0 vs 12.0, 12.0 vs 13.0, and so on.
Changing the matchmaker to ±0.3 BR would be a quick but complete fix for all the current matchmaking issues. Aircraft within 0.3 BR of each other are competitive enough to ensure balanced gameplay.