I play from 2013, but i don’t really know how props are now , because i play only jets.
Some times it gets me and i play some t3 and above for BP tasks etc.
From the few things i’ve seen …yes the level has dropped , but let’s say it’s not really the main game now Well, it is the main game for people that play only WW2 and there is nothing wrong for someone’s endgame being WW2 era , but usually you see passersby - not end game and invested players.
Even if you see …how they call it some people … oh , yes LvL 100 !!! It’s nothing. He could be llvl 100 from ships or tanks or spam play premium jets or an older player that does tasks and doesn’t give 2 craps about competition anyway.
So that’s that. Most people are passersby.
If back there was better?
Yes. Back there not many played t5 (Meteor F.8/ MiG 15s/F-86s) . And needless to say t5 planes were incomplete anyway…I remember i played some games back there and it was like playing the beta of the beta.
So , most people played t3/4 and players cared way more for props than the t5 jets anyway.
Also, there were somewhat historical match ups at least till a point , then they called it realistic and then they made mixed matches.
But yes, it was fun.
And i’ll be real with you.
THE BEST was Japan. You could pick any Zero (all planes were Zeros) , get in… tie your rising sun bandana , put Butterfly song from Smile and feel the prestige, the status of being superior player because everyone will turnfight you, lose and go cry in the forums that his F4U is unhistorically nerfed or your Zero is unhistorically buffed , because US won the war and they downed so many Zeros easily…without even having in mind that every pilot literally said “don’t turnfight the Zeros” … 70 years of history and people still won’t listen what the actual pilot said.
That has to do with the US teams.
But when you went the other side and play US, suddenly your SKILLZ diminishing , like you entered an alternate world… and suddenly you understand that you are practically the only nation that you have to sideclimb/position yourself for 15 minutes (meanwhile it’s either you vs all , or you won’t even catch up to the fight) or when Germany was on the other side… they were already above you anyway.
Then you understand why US = bad players… because they won’t go all the procedure to make 500 pts, they can just go ground pound and if they are lucky get the gts and maybe some air kill.
From there is the phrase “US mains have skill issues” .
In other words, people did care more about props and got invested like they are with jets now.
BUT. Some of the issues were the same.
The saving grace and what carried the game heavily , was historical event battles… they were not perfect, but at least they were better than RB and you went to play different planes in these events and had modifiers for better RP/SL so you did not stuck with X premium for 5000 matches.
I mean , see how happy we are with the SEAD event even if it’s not SEAD and has issues. Imagine having that kind of events every week.
For me the game got significantly worse with Ground Forces. That’s with playerbase and the game itself. You see , many ground players HAD/HAVE to play air to grind a plane for CAS. They don’t really care to learn tactics/ air combat…they just want the plane to toss the bomb in their mode.
And it’s understandable , they won’t care about it. It’s not blaming them. It’s a fact. Everyone cares for what they care.
So yeah, even if the game wasn’t better across the board (other issues) , or you could find US teams struggling ,it was not as bad as it is now.
People cared more. People came in WT for dogfights.
Now…it’s not like this anymore and not in the same tiers.
Sorry for the wall of text , but getting to comparisons …it’s a proccess.