Spawn, takeoff, launch Fox-3, dive to deck, get a kill with Fox-3, get killed by a fox-3, return to lobby, repeat. Sprinkle in a bit of base bombing and you’ve got yourself the average top tier air RB match right now. Fun, right? Well, after thousands of battles… not so sure.
Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying there’s anything inherently wrong with RB as it is (in fact it’s a great game mode on paper) but it’s just becoming extremely boring and repetitive especially as someone who really loves air RB and has played it for years. And not just for top tier, I think that in low/mid tier this is also getting really repetitive especially when you consider the amount of time it actually takes to get to the battle in the first place. I think that some sort of new gamemodes based on RB are really, really needed.
Something along the lines of Enduring Confrontation would be really fun with top tier jets in a realistic game mode setting.
Or perhaps a completely new gamemode, where team A is tasked to defend a bomber group while team B is tasked to destroy said bombers, and the game is cantered around the actual task of the game (keeping the bombers alive) and not just to kill each other. Maybe a game mode where you have AWACS and Tankers as well.
I dunno, those are just some random ideas I made up in 2 minutes, the sky is literally the limit. The developers have a blank canvas at their disposal, it’s a shame they’re not doing anything with it.
I think the current Air RB is for the most part fine (there is always ways to improve it) one of the biggest being smaller team sizes (like 8v8) and actually make it so that you got those smaller team sizes on the regular. But for teh most part its fine.
What is definely is needed is an RB EC gamemode. Air Sim, but third person, realistic controls and GRB style markers (no enemy markers but friendly markers). With large maps and PvPvE gameplay. Ideally drop in and out gameplay like SIm as well. That would give the most amount of people the choice to play what they want.
I mostly play Air Sim these days, but if I just want a quick match, then ARB is perfect for that.
Let us ban the maps we don’t want, period. I know plenty of people who simply bail anyways and don’t play them. Myself included. I have enough vehicles the timed lock doesn’t matter.
Air RB has become map of the earth RB. No more air battles. Once in a while you get a good aerial dog fight, but hardly never.
Let the players choose if we want mixed battles on/off. It would be nice to face actual adversaries instead of op-for same for same battles.
Something has to give here. It has been too repetitive for years.
This topic has already been beaten to death. We want ARBEC or at least small lobby ARB. Gaijin doesn’t care. They want 3 minute 16v16 mayhem TDM. Get over it.
I vote with my wallet and time as do many others.
New gamemodes would be cool and would fix lots of issues, but just seperating Fox-3 carriers from non-Fox-3 carriers via seperate matchmaking would be a very easy bandaid fix for the biggest issues
I only recently joined the forums so I haven’t really had the chance to see topics like this in the past, sorry if they have been posted millions of times before. It’s just something I’ve been thinking about for several months now and to be honest I feel like I’m slowly starting to lose interest in the game because of it… The screenshots you posted speak for themselves
Would love this as well. I think we need loadout-based BRs/matchmaking. It would fix a lot of balancing issues especially at BRs such as 9.0/9.3 which contains flareless and trash missile-carrying jets which regularly have to face superior jets
They’re never going to do something like this. They didnt do it with ir missiles. They didnt do it with fox 1’s. This would cause black holes in the matchmaker and early fox 3 planes would have endless uptiers. The fox 3 meta isnt too much different these days from the fox 1 meta. Multi-pathing changed it all more than anything.
I have to disagree here in that the Aim-54A is a skill check for bots. Easiest missile to dodge in the game really, especially because the people who mostly get it think they can launch it on takeoff and wonder why they never get kills.
No worries, is just… I am too jaded after all these years when we, the veterans, see glaring issues and offer obvious fixes (ARBEC was a thing, they just have to enable it again) but we are being ignored.
:(
My refuge always been in custom battles when I feel like I am about to quit. No rewards, but its fun and surprisingly alot of people play in custom battles. Veterans there taught me how to dogfight properly a couple of years ago.
I mean, the game COULD be so good, if only they would put 10 % more effort and toned down on the greed a little bit.
I agree but I guess that isn’t the case for most of the teams i’m on. Every single time, there will be a tomcat on the enemy team that will get 4-5 kills solely using the Phoenix. How people are managing to consistently die to it something I will never understand.
There always are some less experienced players on the teams
There are planes with terrible RWRs in that BR bracket (MiG-21-bis and MiG-23MF for example)
There are sub-sonic planes and flying bricks, which just try to base rush or ground pound as their air-to-air capabilities are lackluster in that BR bracket
Bad weather can make it hard or even impossible to spot the Phoenix
Some people just don’t give a crap about BVR and just want to get into the furball as quickly as possible
And last but not least (this is a personal observation), if you play multiple matches back to back some people, myself included, tend to pay less attention to their RWRs, as it is just going off all the time.
That’s also why people still rely on multi-pathing so much. You just get pings from multiple directions all the time, so notching seems like a waste of time.
Separating out fox 3’s just isnt going to happen. Itd be farrr too messy and would actually hinder the matchmaker which could hinder gaijins ability to add a new game mode.
Yeah, there are counters to the missiles themselves, but no counter to players that won’t engage with you in close range combat.
What’s the point of flying a non-Fox-3 plane at that BR if you cannot get into range because your enemy is intent on LARPing BVR combat?
