Game play and game modes in War Thunder aviation fall apart at the upper tiers.
The player base at tiers 6 and above largely switch from playing Air arcade to playing Air realistic. This is because the Arcade mechanics, like mid air reloading, really break down as supersonic jets and missiles become more prevalent.
This results in upper tier Air Realistic battles being forced to play more like a nerfed Air Arcade battle. We’ve seen Air RB over the last few years gain 16 v 16, air spawns, reduced match timers, excessive auto AI ticket bleed, and several other mechanics that force extremely short matches.
In my experience, at the upper tiers, Arcade and Realistic battles play VERY similarly.
I believe that splitting the aviation trees, as described above, will allow Gaijin to maintain the Arcade-Realistic- Sim designations, while re-tuning the game modes at these upper tiers - Similar to what they did with Naval Coastal vs Blue Water.
Conceptually, i would make the following adjustments:
Arcade Air should be fine tuned to be the most accessible game mode for aviation. I dont think this would require a huge deviation from the current setup but there are a few adjustments to be made.
-
Remove the timer limit on WEP/afterburner. This doesn’t make a ton of sense for the upper tiers.
-
Remove mid air reloading. Instead add an area in mid-air near or behind the spawn location where planes can fly through and trigger reloading. Very similar to how aviation reloading works in Enlisted.
-
Keep 16 v 16, keep respawns, keep maps similar, keep arcade flight models, keep arcade spotting and still allow lower tiers from the old tree into this game mode.
Realistic Air should embrace a more Enduring Confrontation (EC) style of gameplay.
-
Only include larger maps with multiple first spawn airfields and aircraft carriers when maps have water. Force first spawns to spread out over multiple airfields. This could help mitigate the 16 v 16 furball at the beginning of each match.
-
Remove enemy spotting. Maybe keep the missile diamond spotting and maybe allow enemy spotting if they get within a certain radius of your airfield.
-
Add respawning so that lineups can be used.
-
Add longer match timers and larger ticket counts. I think 45 minutes could be the sweet spot with an average match lasting around 30 minutes.
-
Expand objectives - more naval objectives, slightly less dumb AI, AI vehicles that are relevant to the era of aircraft you’re flying, etc.
-
Add incentives for players to stay for the whole match. Maybe a 10% RP and SL booster gets applied if team tickets drop below 33%. Maybe there could be an AI reinforcements mechanic that gets applied if you’re team is being steamrolled. This should be added to Sim as well.
-
Allow helicopters to spawn into the new Realistic mode and Sim modes.
The game modes just really need work. Game modes that work for lower tier props just dont work well for the modern jets.
This game has so much potential but ancient game modes are really holding it back.
Additionally, if Gaijin created new reserve vehicles, the split of the aviation tree will also give new players a FTP way of getting into supersonic jets without having to grind through a ton of props and early jets. Reserve vehicles for the new tree wouldn’t be necessary though and it could be set up in a similar way to the heli trees.