Continuing the discussion from Updated Planned Battle Rating Changes (April 2026):
Because y’all decided to close the BR discussion thread and then post this - instead of keep it open so we can all respond, I’m gonna put this here and go ‘show me the damn numbers that back this up’ in all 3 game types, cause that sure as hell is not the case in Air AB - granted you guys seem to ignore Arcade in the first place anymore. And granted - the last time I had to have this kind of discussion with a game Dev, in a competing game series - they kept quoting ‘well it has a 50% Win rate what’s the issue’ seemingly incapable of understanding the problem was in HOW that was achieved.
The 2 Su-30’s listed here are - in Arcade - 13.3 aircraft, with access to 6x RVV-AE and 4x R-73’s or PL-8’s at the same time, not that most people playing this are even bringing the R-73’s or PL-8’s in Arcade. The closest to that ability in the US tree is the F-15C MSIP II, which can take 2x AIM-9M’s and 6x AIM-120A’s, or swap out the sidewinders for an extra pair of 120A’s - that have worse G overload, less guidance time, and less explosives than the RVV. Or the F-16ADF with only access to 6x of the same worse ARH missile, no ability for extras. Or the AV-8B+ - which is only where it’s at cause it’s a sub-sonic aircraft, though it only gets 4x 120’s and a pair of 9M’s and even then it’s enough to cause issues. Most 13.3’s aren’t even close to bringing that kind of firepower to the match, some don’t even have ARH missiles, and even those that do can’t match missile performance.
But wait - did I say 13.3 BR? Because reality is - in Arcade people are taking advantage of the matchmaking system so really - it’s operating at a BR of 13.0, which cause that matchmaking can go as high as 1.3 difference the last I checked, has players who are in 11.7 lineups, definitely the odd 12.0’s, getting their heads caved in by ARH missile spam. Which - the initial release of the F-14A caused issues till people adapted cause it’s an older missile with like 17G overload, it was easy to learn to dodge even after you nerfed countermeasures around that time and the fact that there is no ground clutter modeling in Arcade to help confuse missiles. Only the Fakour-90’s have proven to still be an issue once you added that F-14, which is the only one that gets played and needs to go up in BR with how those missiles over perform. Cause considering once you get past the near useless AIM-54’s on the Arcade side, Tomcat’s carry less of worse missiles for their BR, so no one plays them unless they are grinding through them and don’t have the IRIAF or a premium to skip past them. But these are 50G overload with way more advanced electronics and all, and I constantly have to dodge this crap in F-4’s, an F-16 that at 12.3 is way over BR’ed having only IR missiles, and a Tomcat that has missiles on par with an 11.7 aircraft and ARH missiles that can only hit someone dumb enough to fly straight, or actually in a bomber? Or my for some reason 13.0 F2A premium that only has SARH and IR missiles? Hell the one Russian plane I have that high - the also 13.3 Su-33, doesn’t even have ARH just SARH with IOG. A massive list of ‘why in the actual F is this here if something like this is here?’ that I’ll not go in to to keep this wall a little shorter.
You don’t want to move these 2 up cause their ‘performing similarly’ - which I don’t buy in the least - fine. Then you have a bunch of other aircraft you need to move down, especially in the actual tech trees where we have to grind for everything. That MiG-29 you added to Japan makes it clear that 6x ARH missiles is fine at that BR - time to move the F-16ADF to 13.0 and all the other similar F-16’s, not sure if the aircraft with less of the more modern ARH missiles need to drop down below 13.0 in Arcade - but the F-14A and B in the US tech tree need to drop at least 1 stage if not 2 so the non AIM-54’s line up with what other planes have considering how long they take to research and how useless they are once you do currently. F-15A needs to drop another stage. That F-2A ADTW needs to drop out of 13.0. A whole long list of things that need to see these 2 planes less, or not at all, which is likely more work than just moving these 2, granted some of them should be done anyway like the Tomcat’s and the 12.3 IR only F-16’s dropping, and the F-2A ADTW.
And don’t give me some tripe about ‘but the ground ordnance’ on some of these planes BR’s in Arcade - y’all seriously over-value it for the once in a blue moon these planes actually get to use it, or go undetected or ignored to go ham, especially for base bombing cause more often than not they never even make it to the closest base to try and blow it up.