Yeah, but what am I getting SL and RP for, if it isn’t an objective that helps win the match?
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Yeah, I have wondered the same thing. It hasn’t really changed the dynamic and saved bombers from being hunted. Also, not sure what is going on with ground targets in ARB as well. I shot a “light pillbox” and registered a hit 3 times with a Duck APHE shell and didn’t kill it. Also seems like the bunkered in AAA and howitzers take WAY more rounds to pop.
Complicated topic.
A few basics upfront:
You have to consider that at around this BR you can have different maps:
- 4 non-respawning bases and a “killable” airfield.
- 4 respawning bases and no “killable” airfield.
- 3 non-respawning bases and a killable airfield
Whilst on maps of example 1 or 3 the complete destruction of all 3 or 4 bases is a mission goal which results in a comparably large ticket drop and allows you to damage or destroy the enemy airfield - the ticket drop on maps with respawning bases has a small time delay and is usually 300 tickets.
As a rule of thumb - trying to kill enemy airfield with a second run is rather useless - just a few bombers have the necessary TNT load. And even then - you need to climb 4 km above ground level before you drop, otherwise airfield aaa will kill you.
Same as with killing respawning bases in second runs. Going for them is only a good idea if you play a tight match. If you know hat you are doing you can win tight matches if you:
a) face just a few and clueless enemies
b) have killed all enemy ai planes upfront (=no further ticket drop)
c) fly a rather fast bomber
d) lure the remaining enemies to chase you instead that they kill your tickets
e) drag them to high altitude, fly a large loop whilst being chased
f) and time your drop so that your bombs kill 1 or 2 bases
g) and the enemy has no time to react before tickets are at 0 or time is up
You need a hell of experience, the right plane, the right circumstances and some balls, but it works.
Imho 95% of the average bomber pilots should not go for a second run as they are just provide enemy fighters with free kills.
In case they go for a second run:
It makes way more sense to attack a few ground targets with a low level high speed run and rtb (whilst killing the last enemy ai planes) than to go for respawning base.
Regarding respawning bases (reasons and history) - read this:
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Thank you very much for a thorough reply!
I really enjoy reading about history of Warthunder and how the game evolved along with its playerbase, so thanks for the little story time:)
I came to Warthunder for Ground and when I found out the game is still perceived by many as mainly Air oriented (which is understandable given how long the Air content is in development compared to Ground and Naval), I assumed that Air game modes would be its crown jewel. Instead I was very surprised that Air RB is perceived as kind of decaying part.
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You are welcome!
It is imho just a matter of your perspective:
Regarding the numbers of players - WT Air AB and Air RB is a story of success. But as soon as you realize that the majority of the players around you are enforced to play there (mainly economy and grind) and not due the passion of flying and enjoying this specific match - things get complicated.
The majority of feedback to gaijin in this forum comes from highly experienced players. They provided hundreds and thousands of proposals and suggestions how to improve the game play. What the majority of them not understand is that these mostly very good proposals are contradicting to gaijins goals.
Why? In order to be (and to stay) attractive for new (minor) customers (= main target group) the game play in itself has to be as simple as possible - as the younger player generation sees wt as it is: A plain shooter.
Almost everything what long term players propose increases complexity for newer players which makes them less attractive for them.
Most long term players have found their niches in the game which allows them to have fun - despite the hell of weaknesses of game play and the clear tendency of gaijin to make skill less important / decisive.
That’s where you lose me…but seriously, the issue I take is that it has gotten even harder to grind this game. Despite all of the virtue signaling they have done to improve that. They just subtly changed mechanics of the game to recover the hit on the ease of research. The bomb loads to kill bases, the survivability of targets, the damage models of planes. I may sound tin foil hat here but I have been playing for years and it seems that it got worse. I had to respade a bunch of vehicles because of the addition of EFS and Flam (should have just given it to spaded vehicles but that is another story) and what I noticed is that the “rp loss when fast switching matches” is WAY worse, and that the prevalence of respawning base maps and AAA chad sniper maps have increased. I don’t know what is up with shell shatter, I haven’t been keeping up but some shells are miniature nukes and others are literal mosquito bites. All this leads to a really toxic gameplay experience which I’m sure appeals to the “git gud” and “u mad bro” crowd. You said it yourself, there is no good reason to even try to bomb a second run. But if you j out you get crew lock. I dunno. It’s been a not pleasant experience for me though.
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Really depends on if your team won the air superiority fight or not. If all the remaining enemy fighters are bottled up around their own airfield or playing cat and mouse off to one side, bombers pretty much can do whatever they want in the remaining time.
That is something that becomes apparent when you first start playing. WT’s concept is great, the models are excellent, the actual game play is… okay, if repetitive. But the overall game structure and progression is crap. A lot of it seems counter productive to providing a “good gaming experience”.
Gaijin gets away with it because its the market incumbent and it has a captive playerbase (insert sunk cost here).
I would argue that the reality doesn’t hit until rank 3-4. Then the progression literally grinds to a fraction of the speed. Then you buy a premium or premium time only to learn that it doesn’t really make a difference after a while. By then, they got your dough and abracadabra mish mash your opinion is trash to them. Might as well go somewhere else, but I really do want to see all of my trees unlocked and vehicles spaded. One day I will snap out of it and quit trying. I wish I could unlock and spade everything because then I could actually enjoy the game.
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Entirely by design.
Well, there are two things that prevent the further potential complexity imo.
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The flying itself is so difficult, that most players won’t get past the basics to get bored of it and start looking for objectives. I mean, even a beginner with lack of flying skills can go for objectives, but why would he do that if learning dogfighting is so fun and doesn’t require teamwork?
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Automatic matchmaking is very popular thing nowadays and even though we all love it for making it so simple to quickly find a match full of players for us. It also prevents making connections with people in order to start playing as a team. If Warthunder would have small community and only custom game lobbies, the gameplay would look much different imo, because you would meet the same people and make connections and team chemistry imo.
The reason I made this post, is that I struggle to find a niche with bombers. The gameplay seems to be just way too passive and noninteractive with them.
Now I admit I don’t have an experience with bombers past Rank 1, but from gameplay videos I have seen and from general knowledge about bombers, I don’t thing it gets much different.
It feels very much like low tier Coastal RB, where you just join the match full of bots and just mindlessly farm them and some real player mows you down.
So thats why I asked about bases, because I struggle to find purpose and fun in just bombing bases. I understand I should be kind of a prime target for opposing team, so they get distracted by me and it helps my team, but the first bomb run is just pure PvE experience and second run there is nobody left.
From my experience with WT, you often hit a wall and it gets frustrating, until you learn something new and everything just clicks:) So I thought I might try to climb that wall by asking here:)
Seeing this and the overall tenor of your reply similar - the longer you play, the more you understand how the game works, like you pointed out here:
So the ease of progress at lower ranks is simply aimed to keep players attached and give the majority of new players this illusion that grinding is a walk in the park.
Imho you are already trapped in the hamster wheel :-)
Have a good one!
Dear sir,
After almost 3k hours in the game, I came to this conclusion long ago. However, I do think it is fighting the good fight to keep bringing up the absurdity of ideas the people who make decisions around this games mechanics hold.
The amount of time required to earn any event vehicle, fomo, marketplace et al is just always flirting with the border of scummy. What percentage of people that actually have their own money (not their parents cc) possess the 40+ hours a week needed to grind an event? No one, so if they want they must buy. Unless you are a cc or your earning potential is otherwise centered around gaming as a profession.
They know their product is far afield of any real competition so they squeeze as much as they can instead of actually fixing real issues with the game, to make it enjoyable to the loyal player base.
So, we circle back to the point of this post. Respawning air bases are a symptom of the disease that is going on. To ask what is the point would cause one to ask what is the point of any of it? It is shown obvious that the main work focus isn’t to make a game that is for the ones like myself who crave real meaningful gameplay and progression. It’s to get people to open their wallets (or their dad’s) as often as possible before they quit.
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If i connect this ^^ with the following 2 quotes:
…you might consider to rethink your overall approach whilst playing wt.
Aerial warfare and ground warfare have similar goals (=killing enemies), similar tactics (ambushes and using own strengths whilst denying the enemy using their strengths) but are at least in prop BRs the basic skill requirement of flying is rather low, thanks to mouse aim and instructor. The challenge is the skill to bring own guns on target whilst denying the enemy the chance to do the same. That’s why skilled players avoid headons.
Regarding niche for bombers:
If your goal is just to grind - comprehensible, but imho part of the problems in Air RB. If you want to play bombers with a combination of fun & supporting your team:
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Imho up to the BRs 2.7 - 3.0 you can still have fun with classic bomber game play (=playing PvE) whilst having a significant game impact - if you made the “right” choices regarding your selected aircraft, the approach (route & altitude) to your targets (and back to your airfield) and if you realize that the key to survival is to avoid contacts with enemy fighters - and if this is not possible, to use manual gunners way earlier than your attacker is ready to open fire.
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Above 2.7 / 3.0 things get complicated as your main protection (= altitude advantage) becomes useless the longer you are airborne whilst your game impact with classic bombing vanishes thanks to the respawning bases.
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Technically seen you need to be smarter than the average fighter pilot in order to have a small chance to drop and to rtb.
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Your only chance to have an actual game impact as a bomber (so not being “dead weight”) at BRs 3.7 - 4.7 is to acknowledge the necessity to support your team within the PvP battle.
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So either by dragging enemy interceptors away from your own fighter climb zone, killing or damaging them with your gunners and bringing them low to you own interceptors - or just simply by not dying with the first few shots of an enemy fighter.
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Alone the fact that you are being chased whilst not dying has (at least in theory) an impact on the fighter vs fighter battle somewhere else.
To use your bomber in an offensive role needs imho experience in ACM - and a bomber with forward fire power. There are a lot of planes with the necessary attributes with the game. But without being a decent fighter pilot their effect is limited vs better than average pilots and useless vs good pilots - all they have to do is to wait until you lose your energy advantage of your air spawn…
There are more people than I initially realized that get together and create custom mission centered around a more “historical campaign” type scenario. IMO Gaijin dropped the ball when they let those historical missions with Fry narrating go the way of the dodo. I would have spent more money buying cool dlc custom missions with historically accurate (paint scheme, configuration, accurate regiment, accurate tactical locations etc.) than the next new shiny next gen fighter jet. But they made that call long ago to cater to a different market.
Bombing is mainly used as a way to turn off the old lightning sac and just grind some rp. I usually do it while I eat dinner. There is a cap of only 4 full on bombers per match, so to squad up is unrealistic in realistic. Oh the irony. You would be waiting forever on matchmaking and if other players wanted to escort the bombers would have to vulture over the airfield while their escort climbed to them and by then the match is over.
So, as my reply to the other gent explains, it’s a forgotten relic of a business model that they now just tweak as much as possible to try to make a dime off of it. Cause the JU288 can get two runs easy…
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It happens from time to time that you meet a 4 men squad in bombers. But even if they try to give each other mutual fire support / cover with gun ships like Bv 238s - the conceptual disadvantage stays the same.
I remember a match 12-18 months ago vs experienced, squadded and well coordinated bomber pilots - flying a close 3 men “V” with 3 Bv 238s and their number 4 flew top cover in a Pe-8.
All i had to do was to get high above them taking out their #4 and 1 with a single high speed dive from 7 to 8 km from their high 12 o’clock with the right angle - the Pe-8 is defenseless from this angle and their number 1 could not use his twin MG 151s as the Pe-8 blocked his view. The rest died later to my SM 91.
Interesting!:)
Just as I despise grinding while still doing it and praising just playing for the joy of it while not doing it myself, I also despise solo queueing in automachmaked game modes even though doing it myself while calling for more community driven shift to custom games, then not participating, when offered one:)
I am glad at least some portion of playerbase is actualy doing it though, applaud to that:)
I didn’t know that, are there any other limits like this? Is it documented somewhere?
Problem with the custom mission is it doesn’t supply any rewards, and the campaign rewards are a pittance. So, it’s really reserved for the people that are done grinding, or that isn’t their goal. It’s not being gatekept per se but be prepared to really participate in some of them.
I don’t remember where it is documented about the bombers but it was talked about on the old forums a good bit. As stated earlier in the thread, ARB has been slightly tinkered with over the years without any major changes. There is a “reason” behind everything. LIke bomber gunners being reticent to say fire because players used to gunship in Sim to farm RP and thus relegated our AI brethren to low functioning status. Meanwhile airfield AAA and such have superhuman capabilities to head shot my pilot at a mile out.
Just more cases of players reacting preternaturally in response to the atrocious grind by any means they can to circumnavigate the grind. Same reason, IMO, there are so many cheaters and scummy players. The business model created them. Base stealers, kill stealers, tk’ers, cheaters. All products of the design.
Some of the user missions are tres cool though. Find a discord where people are on there squadding up and try it out to get a break from the aforementioned grind scenario. To appreciate the spirit of the game interred by bottom lined principals.
to farm sl and rp that’s it