Why should they work together, many CAS only use ARB to spade and are not intrested in objectives
This is what we need in GRB more fighters
- Yes - from a player perspective if he expects more than point and click.
- No - from gaijin’s perspective as they satisfy the overwhelming masses which are used to play CoD etc. are exactly looking for this kind of game play.
Seeing the development of Air RB in the last 3-5 years, the mode became Air RB+, basically all changes made skill less important, the MM and BR setting policy is “engagement optimized” and suited to satisfy the average player, but not long term players.
And the numbers of players increased constantly.
A few years ago you were happy if you got 1 or 2 kills whilst flying German 109s (as US teams get totally outclimbed) and if you were able to kill one or 2 out of the hordes of J2M2 and Ki-84s at your six whilst flying a P-51 for the US - and getting chased for 1 hour like on Wake Island.
Today - all go low and enjoy headon orgies…
Yes and no. Imho it is more a fight for grind for most players.
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As long as PvE players play Air RB just for the sake of grind (so without enjoying the here and now) as they are on a journey to somewhere else, nothing will change.
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So the low skill floor to get SL/RP with base bombing is luring a hell of players into battles which serve just the purpose of being prey for PvP players…
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And the PvP players see wt as it is: A plain shooter. So there is nothing wrong with being " kill driven".
From my perspective “real” team play is very rare - at the end of the day wt is a contest of kills / being on top of the scoreboard, so you compete with enemies in blue, at least from a holistic pov. So most people see team play not as a desired goal. Maybe as a tool to get more kills/points, you see this just by the ever increasing number of kill steals or team kills…
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I do remember back in the day on one of the old Essen maps repeatedly ending the match within a couple of minutes in a prop bomber because I would just flank and bomb the airfield. I did this until the fighter mains figured out what I had been doing and started intercepting me. That night I made my Me-264 the most important aircraft in the match.
Killing ground units doesn’t net any meaningful rewards and leave you open to fighters. Noone wants to ground pound in Air RB because it isn’t worth your time. That is beside the fact that there is no interesting gameplay because most of the targets are static positions, they are highlighted on the map and in view, and the convoys barely fire back with AA fire. No danger, no invigorating gameplay. Taking 6 Mavericks in an F-16C just means you wasted 2 pylons because 6 Mavericks won’t net you the same rewards as an air to air kill, let alone 2. Ground RB is where people go to bomb because it is much more interesting searching for targets and being rewarded for destroying them. Along with the actual damage models being present, it is much more interesting gameplay as well because you can use stealth, which is not really an option in Air RB with the markers.
Destroying bases slow you down and leaves you vulnerable to fighters, but gives absolutely massive rewards for the little effort isually put into it. This has caused 11.3 to become a shitshow with F-4S players that have a PD radar that shows them chaff doesn’t effect those radar styles chaffing in order to avoid radar missiles from MTI and PD systems. All the while actual strikers can’t even make it to bases, and as we discussed above ground striking isn’t worth the effort put into it. In low tier, ground strikers get an airspawn much closer to objectives and are faster than bombers so they get there first most of the time and destroy the usefulness of bombers in the only mode they actually do anything useful for rewards. The only level bombers people in ground rb give two shits about is the Pe-8 and Lancasters with the large bombs.
Going air to air requires knowledge of weapons/airframes to be successful. PVP is the basis of the mode now, not much to say there.
I mean, the incentive for them to change it really isn’t present with Ground RB. Most people do ground strike there. If you got rid of the “no hostile players left on the enemy team” ticket bleed it would just prolong the games for no real reason.
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Imho i was just not clear enough. If you see my two previous posts together, this was my core message:
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Air RB is flooded with new players - unable or unwilling to invest time in learning how the game works. The current SL/RP gains for killing bases allows players to research whole tech trees without having any clue about aerial warfare, tactics and strategy.
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WT is nothing more than a plain shooter with a massive grind challenge. As in all shooters, mainly kills are decisive. Game objectives are there to enforce engagements and to give some people the illusion that they can influence the outcome of a PvP (=shooter) game with PvE actions.
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The only cases in which PvE is able to decide matches right now, are prop BRs below 5.0 (outside Ju 288 black hole) - and this only on certain maps like Tunisia when attacker can win the game in 4 minutes, or if the PvP players were unable to made the “right” decisions (attacking the wrong targets) or if they got outplayed by a more experienced player.
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The other exception is when the enemy team is clueless, allowing an experienced player to win by tickets after 25 minutes - even 1 vs 8. But this requires the right balance between PvP and PvE - and an extensive know how of the strengths and weaknesses of all aircraft in the BR range - and the “right” plane choices and playing outside jet BRs.
An example:
In this replay you see me flying a B7A2 - playing 1 vs 9 after 8 minutes on Poland. I killed one cocky Yak, finished a base and played easy prey for them by flying in their plain view - dragging them so high that they had no engine power to catch me. It was pure luck that i crossed long before the flight path of their only bomber, i shot him to pieces before he could drop (ofc he was stolen, flat spinning and burning) , so my ticket win was based on the fact, that my team killed all 3 bases and their time none.
- As a summary:
The objectives - together with the average player skill - are the reason for the current mess. Objectives are way too easy (like bombing respawning bases) and give way too much rewards for the imho limited skill necessary. And ofc the players are grind driven and look for the easiest way.
I fully support your idea of a rework of win objectives to have the 3 ways:
- TDM
- Ticket win either by killing all tickets or by time
- Airfield kill
…to win a match. But imho you project your higher experience level as baseline for all - and this is way too optimistic. You might want to check this post and see that gaijin itself creates boredom with unbalanced map design and also the ai ticket bleed was often discussed in this forum.
All in all gaijin should rethink their reward structure for killing targets. I understand that point and click on stationary ground targets should not give the same rewards than an A2A player kill, but the current reward structure has created lobbies full with fighters attacking bases…
Have a good one!
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Would the simplest solution to all of this just be to copy Sim EC into RB?
I mean Air RB at the upper tiers is in such a bad state atm and Gaijin seems unwilling to invest ANY time in game mode development so maybe just copy Sim EC to Air RB and throw it in the events tab.
I dont wanna let the perfect be the enemy of the good here.
Yea there’s better solutions but Gaijin doesn’t seem to be willing to explore any of those solutions.
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Tbh - one positive aspect of the current situation is: You know what you get when entering Air RB. And frankly spoken - you saw the disaster when they put Rocky Canyon into prop BRs.
I even fought with my IT P-47 on an EC map (Spain) - 15 minutes flying to potential dots, found 2 264s plus 190 D-12 escort, 7 minutes to equalize his alt/energy advantage, 3 minutes dogfight (from 9k to tree top), got the kill and game ended seconds later…dentist visits make more fun.
As long as there are full lobbies 24/7 nothing will change.
The game is full of flaws and they sell high tier jets like sliced bread.
Again, low player experience, stupid map design/ game mechanics and wrong incentives for low skill tasks like base bombing brought the game play here…
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Adding the huge maps to props was really dumb so maps definitely need to be tailored to BR levels.
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SL/RP income is steering player behavior & actions.
As long as i got 5.348 SL (prem B7A2) for a player kill - which requires outside headons some skill - and ~ 5.800 SL for a 0 skill task like bombing a respawning base (reducing tickets between 180-300), there is no incentive for new players to improve.
2 Likes
The objective structure of the current mode is the root of the problem.
I’d follow up on that and say the objective structure is a result of needing an objective for any of the possible varieties of aircraft a player could spawn with. So, you can never tailor a map/mode to a specific kind of aircraft, and you get a mish mash where fighters end of dominating (which makes sense!).
Solutions as I see them:
- Split up the game modes to CAS, fighter battle, bomber raid, etc. (bad, fractures playerbase)
- Players select a roster (bomber, CAS, fighter, helicopter, SPAA(?!)) in advance, and then their options are limited based on whatever game mode comes up.
*yes this implies player controlled SPAA in AB could be an option
**dividing the aircraft types would be a task, but you could do single-seat/AI gunner/bomb bay as a first pass, with air battle, tactical strike, and strategic bombing as a rough mission spread
i agree with the vast majority of what you said, if not all.
I do believe you missed 1 thing however - Majority of air rb players these days simply do not care.
They want short matches, they dont care about anything other than SL or RP, the whole COD type behaviour and mentality has seeped into WT.
They dont want to use tactics or strategy, they want to just rush in and headon the first person they see, they want to only be in the most powerful vehicles and rack up kills.
They dont wanna fly for long, they wanna rush in, get what they can and get out and go into the next one, personally i HATE it, but i cannot ignore what i believe to be the common behaviour.
The majority simply do not care or want to actually play, i mean majority use every vehicle the same regardless of planes ability etc, take the bombers for example, perfectly content with flying straight into the enemy team over and over again, they dont want to do anything else, its like dangling a carrot and they take it because its all they know.
I want change, i want it to be more like what you said and more involving but i dont think this opinion is reciprocated.
I am not quite wording this right and i dont quite know how to say it but i think you understand what i am getting at.
Its a problem for sure.
5 Likes
I’m not saying any particular way is better as of yet, but the main issues I see with type limits are:
- Even if the objective requires ground attack, Fighters are still going to be dominant on a gameplay basis. So if your fighter team gets swept you’ll be a sitting duck as bombers/CAS.
- If ground attack is the objective, and only a smaller portion of the team can complete it effectively, and that portion has no idea what they’re doing, that team has lost on setup.
I think take the slots idea just a littttttle further, and instead of 10 fighter slots and 6 non-fighter slots one game, have 16 fighter slots the first game, and 16 non-fighter slots the second. (It’s not strict, play with those numbers however you like, just bear in mind #1 and #2 above).
I think the thing is non-fighters only need fighters to not get killed by other fighters. Which still gives the round-ending ability to fighters, when present, because they can kill all the other aircraft.
Though I think what you might be getting at is having fewer targets–one ball bearing factory, one radar station, one Tirpitz–which translates to one engagement. So, you have one engagement, with one macro “pass”, and not a bunch of spread-out targets that you invariably get your ticket punched by a fighter when flying between.
Agree in general, but there are some prop strike aircraft and bombers that (if flown as fighter) can win games despite being “almost useless” in their intended role in a 90% TDM mode - most prominent: Wyvern.
And to counter this gaijin buffed aaa around the 4 bases and they get killed like flies…
As you play mostly props in Air RB - rather unsuccessful - and refuse to accept that you try to square the circle:
A small “real life” example what is wrong with prop Air RB (replay) confirming my initial claims that players and gaijin share the responsibility for most of the topics you addressed.
- U see a teamkill by a friendly Spitfire + crash of the Spitfire. 2 Fighters down right after spawn.
- U see a braindead friendly B-18B attacking a base low, despite gaijin buffed aaa defending bases and he got warned. Useless death.
- After 4 minutes i played 8 vs 14 thanks to multiple noob mistakes. After 6 minutes 2 vs 13…after 9 minutes 2 vs 6, some crashed and i killed a Bv238.
- The my last team mate decided to crash on purpose - despite being 200 kmph faster than the nearest enemy. There was no need to crash, we could have won this easily.
- Two of last 6 enemies crashed later, i killed a 190, a XP-50 and some ai planes to stop the ticket bleed - imho mainly caused by ai planes. I had no ammo left to kill the last 2 guys (B-25 & PBJ) and lost by tickets as the remaining ai planes wiped out my tickets.
So without initial team killing, stupid low runs into aaa defending mini-bases, crashing on purpose (Wyvern) and enemy ai killing my tickets. Stupid players and bad map design. Full stop. No need to make things more complicated.
I am not sure if you included your own proposal into “enough good ideas” but my core message was to outline that you won’t get better by changing given parameters if you struggle to play successfully in the current environment.
In other words - playing the game rather successfully despite all its flaws and weaknesses makes your points way more valid.
Imaging you see the need for a marriage therapy - and your therapist has 4 ex-wifes. So either he is not credible because he failed 4 times or highly experienced in non-working strategies for this issue…
I do not want to repeat myself - my position in this issue was detailed outlined here, here and here.
And as written earlier - the overwhelming masses are steered by gaijin with rewards for performed actions. So just by making certain activities less or more attractive gaijin itself decides how the players “behave” and what actions will be most likely performed.
From a holistic pov there is nothing wrong with proposals suited to increase the necessary brain power whilst playing the game. And don’t get me wrong, i support any ideas to improve Air RB if they look feasible.
But imho gaijin benefits extremely from the current state of Air RB - and the rather low entry barrier to play an aircraft based shooter with point and click with a mouse - without the necessity of complex thoughts whilst playing Air RB.
So again, i appreciate your efforts, but imho pure PvP and pure PvE players won’t see any benefit for them - and gaijin has simply no interest in creating more complex game play as this would increase the requirements to play the game, this might reduce the steady stream of new players, happy to buy some top tier jets for insane amounts of real money.
Have a good one!
Your suggestion is a really novel one and I personally like it.
We can add an additional mode Air RB(Mission) that works as you suggested and let both fighter mains and objecive-oriented ones participate, while having the original Air RB mode remaining but only accessible to fighter planes so that pvp enjoyer can still have pure air fights.
What you’re asking for is infinitely closer to SB than to current RB, just go play that.
That is exactly the problem of Air RB - the mode was designed for people which enjoyed flying and share the passion for aerial warfare. And it became (or was reduced to) a tool to grind to get somewhere else.
A fellow player above nailed it:
So as long as the income / reward structure makes Air RB attractive for non-passionate players trying to act as pilots without even caring about the mode - there is no point to discuss any changes which are solely determined by gaijin.
I talked about credibility of claims. And i invested imho way too much time trying to encourage you to take a step back to see the broader picture.
If Air RB would be a very sick person with high fever - you can’t heal the fever by trying to cool down the body - you need to fight the infection.
I described very detailed (and even in my first post) that mature/experienced players support anything what increases fun by adding more challenging game play.
But this doesn’t change the fact that those players are not the target group of gaijin - and the player mentality of the overwhelming majority is exactly as described by the fellow pilot. So in order to earn money gaijin tries to satisfy the majority and the game looks exactly like that - as you can see in the ever increasing number of players…
3 Likes
The root in question:
In all seriousness, I agree. Games should not end independently of player input except by timeout, and especially silly when some of those AI units kill themselves off by the dozen slamming it into a hill. I don’t agree with irrecoverable losses even when you’ve eliminated the entire enemy team, because oddness with varying player counts on spawn could influence that and it’s generally just not a pleasant feeling to win and still wind up losing.
We really need an added bank of tickets on top of what we already have, maybe one that can only be depleted by bombing bases, to stop auto bleedouts, if your suggestion isn’t implemented.