Meanwhile, under your system, the earliest, flareless F-4C would be facing the most advanced domestic Phantom (F-4S) with high G, long range, borderline undodgable missiles, PD RADAR and AIM-7Fs. Every. Single. Game.
Your F-86-F2s would be facing all aspect missiles. Every. Single. Game.
Unlocked a starter jet? First time out of props? Guess who has to fight MiG-15 Bis’s and F-86s. And, you guessed it, every, single game.
Enjoy playing an M5A1 Stuart when you’re facing KV-1s every game. Or a Hetzer against Jumbos. Or countless other examples.
If your biggest issue is uptiers, how does it make sense to switch to a system that guarantees effective uptiers for most vehicles within a rank?
Even if the BR system is ignored, there will still be hard coded “uptiers” and “downtiers.” Some vehicles will only face vehicles better than it, and some will only face worse vehicles. This will make balance terrible.
Tiers/Ranks used to come into play for matchmaking in the past, for certain modes, but have changed somewhat over the years. Now being relegated to only being used as a metric for progression. Meaning you have to unlock “x” amount of vehicles in this tier to open up the next tier for research . . making tiers just for researching purposes primarily now. And the BRs are made up numbers not solely based on a vehicle’s performance, but more as a measure on what vehicles they will face in battle. And production/service dates have never really been a parameter for that either. Also, BRs can overlap tiers, so . . . that would be problematic as well. The current system is functional, and yeah, there are spots where improvements could be made. But save a complete overhaul of the entire BR & MM’ing system already in place, small tweaks here and there are the best option available. While I agree that simpler is almost always the better option, over simplification can be just as big a problem or even worse than what we are using now . . … just my opinion