Why am I great at arcade but terrible at RB?

Game Discussion Realistic Battle
1

I always do well in arcade battle, score around 2500-3000, 6-8 kills a game, usually finish in the top 4. Yet I jump into RB and I have god awful games. 500-1000 scores are my average and I usually finish in the bottom 5.

I’m not yolo rushing caps, I just seem to have zero luck. Bombers single me out, my Spaas can never hit anything, spot a Tiger 2 side-on in my Conqueror at 100m, perfect side-on hit bounces off yet he spins around and nails me in one, same with a lowly t34-85 surviving a 300mm pen turret hit from my US T34 only to return a shell right through my tank blowing me up.

My last 2 RB games I decide to play aggressive, I die 3 times without even firing a single shot (dam RB long range campers…) and finish with a great score of 450 in my rank 5 match.

Then I play a conservative game, hold back, try and cover flanks, team wins, I have the most boring game ever and finish with 1 kill and 1 assist for a grand score of 590. I had more fun in the first game.

Yet the scoreboard shows players getting scores of 4000+. I’m like ‘how?’.
Unless I’m in some prime camping spot and the enemy team are stupid its rare for me to get more than 1500 in a RB game even when lady luck smiles on me.

Just makes me annoyed, I just had a quick rank 4 US arcade game and nailed 6 tanks and 1 heli, finish with a 3300 score in second spot, yet if that was a RB game I would not get a single kill and die comically multiple times.

I do prefer RB but I question why I keep bothering with it, even after 100’s games I still suck at it.

2

Arcade is full of bad players thats why you do well in arcade compared to RB being the best player in the average arcade game is the equivalent of being below average or just average in realistic

You should be in some vehicles being able to rush to an early position and kill people still traversing to their positions is easy kills

Learn to aim

early APDS is buggy and you probably got hit by a hidden modifier aim for ammo when using early sabot

RB requires you to use your brain significantly more than arcade, you should understand the positions most likely to have people sniping from you dont get a magical nametag above the enemy saying “im here shoot me”

You’re not meant to stick to one thing the entire game you should push when possible to a better position unless the position you’re in is working for you

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You get more score for capping than kills its how it works

3

You also get much more score for killing tanks/planes in plane than in tank.

4

A big part of RB is spotting, and conversely - avoiding spotting through smart movement.
You also decry campers, but that is more or less the doctrinal use-case for many nations’ vehicles, or even within the same nation (tank destroyers).

I’m not some excellent player. I’m not even good. However, I did manage to crack the code to having fun with my 4.7 British line up.

My recipe is as follows:

  1. Observe your assigned squaddie. Are they playing smart or dumb? if smart, accompany them, cover for them and keep them alive generously without risking yourself too much in the process. Done right, even a 500% booster won’t sabotage your game.
  2. If point 1 fails, and you’re on your own - never go straight for the capture point except at the start of the game, and never stay on it. You want to be on the enemy team’s side, hidden in bushes or some kind of cover from their side of the map. Your team can see you, the enemy cannot and most importantly - you can see the point flawlessly and ideally - ways to get to that point.
  3. Sit in that area, and observe as enemies try to counter-cap and shoot their ammo racks, if you cannot - go for gunner/breach/cannon.
  4. Communicate. Did you see an enemy? Press ALT and click their approximate location on your minimap. Did you die to an enemy? Do the same. Also pay attention to your teammates doing the same
  5. After enemy recognizes what you are doing, disengage back to your side of the map and relocate to another capture point to repeat the process.
  6. Try to be a vulture and exploit your more reckless teammates to see where shots come from and counter-snipe if you cannot find a safe position behind the enemy lines.
  7. Never move in the open, or move first. I found this tutorial helpful for staying alive:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWg94qSBXec
  8. Pay attention to sounds. You can win match-ups against superior turret rotation, armour and even stabilizer by recognizing that there’s a tank on the other side of the corner and waiting for them to drive into your cannon shot. In such events, aim for the cannon/breach/gunner - do not risk an ammo rack simply turning black. I’ve had very consistent results in my firefly/sherman2/avenger by shooting the gunner, then the breach and then the gunner again for destroying kvs and tigers and panthers.
  9. Use “Free Look” on your camera to look around corners as well without exposing yourself. Stop, Look, Listen!
  10. Use your binoculars to put your tank into a “dead space” where you cannot be observed by having a hill or barricade hiding your entire turret and tank. The binocular gives you height and zoom.
  11. Bind “Rangefinder” to an easy key like thumb buttons on your mouse. When you see an enemy tank and you do not know the distance - press it! Your crew will call out the distance, and in a few seconds it will display on your screen as well in sniper/bino mode
  12. Bind “Adjust gun range” or whatever it is to your mousewheel. Scroll up/down to adjust to the distance you now know to get easy snipes across long distances, potentially even hitting weakspots by not having to aim above the enemy tank.
  13. Repeating myself: Stay mobile. Once the enemy knows you’re farming them from a spot, it’s no longer safe and if they’re smart - they will have communicated your position.

This is what happens if you don’t communicate: I found a spot right beside the cap by Reichstag on Berlin, and just sat there farming tigers and kvs in a measly br 3.7 sherman II. It wasn’t spawn sniping, it was shooting tanks driving onto the cap completely oblivious to the world around them.

Spoiler

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This would’ve been prevented if they pinged my location, but they just kept driving past me repeatedly.

Some maps this works better than others.

My best matches were on Jungle, Abandoned Factory, Seversk13 and similar maps. These got spread out objectives allowing you to abandon/disengage a dangerous position and relocate elsewhere and get behind the enemy.

Worst were on the linear tunnel maps like Ardennes, North Holland and the like.

Oh, and research tracks early. Some tanks are bloody useless without that modification - my firefly was a torture to use until I researched tracks because you couldn’t turn with it without losing all your speed.

As Mithrix says, “Speed is War.”

2 Likes
5

try use fast tank

6

Arcade and Realistic require different mindsets and even perspectives. AB lets you be “lazy” and not scan for targets because the game highlights them for you. So you don’t develop the “visual acuity” (or whatever the term is, first cup of coffee) to detect vehicles without them and all the little tricks like peeking corners and dipping the third person cam down to see over hills, etc. This takes time to develop and playing arcade atrophies this skill. I don’t even play AB at all besides the assaults.
The only good thing about having played AB is that it has taught you not to skyline yourself since everyone on the map can see you if they get an LOS. With so many cheaters with wallhacks in the game, this is a healthy habit to keep.

7

Its just a very different gamemode

Headphones and knowing typical enemy pathing gets you a long way towards those score amounts

2 Likes
8

I just fill like I’m cursed with bad luck though. I can guard a choke point and a random artillery hit will blow me up.
Comparison

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between a recent AB and RB game for me… lol /sad.
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1 Like
9

Try playing some RB games at a lower BR. And play with someone. I’m on rn if you’d like someone to play with

2 Likes
10

For artillery -

Notice the red smoke grenades?

Those show where the artillery will hit. You got 11-13 seconds to relocate (assuming untrained crew skill)

11

Its because AB and RB are completely different game modes.

Aside from the very obvious lack of markers, which is honestly the biggest hurdle when transitioning from AB to RB, tanks are much slower and cumbersome, guns are much more accurate than in AB, and tanks are less resiliant to post pen damage in my experience, having played some ground AB myself.

Tactics that work in AB do NOT work in RB, and vice versa. I have a horrible time in AB myself because im so used to RB that I naturally employ RB tactics which dont work in AB, thus I fail miserably there.

“Camping” in RB is literally the aim of the game though. You get yourself into a strong position with good sight lines, and just let enemies wander into your gun. If you are stationary holding an angle, you hold all the advantages. They have to see you, stop, wait for the gun to settle, rangefind (or guesstimate it on the fly) and then fire. In AB the game does like 2/3 of this for you, and gun stabilisation on movement is less extreme so the advantages the “camper” has are diminished.

To be agressive In RB you need to know where positions that people regularly set up are, watch for them, avoid them if possible, and keep an eye out. You also need to know how to hide yourself so you dont get seen. You need to also watch for sneaky light tanks zooming off to the side which unlike AB, will NOT be marked for you, and may be covered in bushes or be hiding between a big line of bushes and be very hard to see. This is all stuff that takes time and experience to learn - and usually the experience comes from being killed by people sitting in these positions and angles unfortunately, so it can be a frustrating learning curve.

The more you play RB the more you will get used to it. You have to ditch many of your AB tactics and even positions though, they probably wont work in RB the same way I found my RB tactics and positions didnt work in AB.

Edit: I forgot to mention sound. Sound is MASSIVE in RB. If you play with sounds turned down, or play with music in the background, dont. You need to be able to hear other players engine sounds which will give you a heads up on when enemy tanks are around, how close they are, which direction they are going, and as you learn all the different engine sounds, a general idea of what tank it is without even seeing it. Quite often I will hear an enemy tank coming up to me, so I will park myself on a corner and wait for them to drive around it completely oblivious, and delete them.

You do not want to make any unnessecary sound yourself. Dont fire your main gun or MG willy nilly, and don’t move around unless you need to, especially because your engine sound can mask other engine sounds so not only can they hear you, you cant hear them.

3 Likes
12

In the first photo you are obviously playing a low BR match and the second, at least a 8.7 match. What lineup were you using as I see a skink as the last vehicle. That vehicle is woefully useless against most air and the majority of ground threats at those BRs.

And like they’ve stated above, RB requires you to train your eyes and ears. Eventually you’ll gain the ability to detect movement, or hear it. After that it’s just a matter of observing your enemy.

For SPAA use, you just need to learn to lead aircraft/helos. A quick firing gun platform is the best as your chances to hit are better, unless you’re using a HE-VT shell or it’s radar equipped.

13

RB just take time to learn, I was gonna go through and explain but _Zekken explained it all pretty much perfectly.

14

Remember the survivability onion:

Don’t be heard
Don’t be seen
Don’t be acquired
Don’t be shot at
Don’t be penetrated
Don’t die

Use sound to your fullest advantage. If you don’t have one, get a good pair of headphones. Go into your settings and turn other engine sounds to max, and yours to minimum. If you hear an enemy around the corner, turn your engine off and they won’t hear it idling.

The VAST majority of kills in GRB happen where the person getting killed isn’t even aware of the person shooting them.

Learn things like point authority, side scraping, and track baiting.

Use your free look to peek around corners before driving around them.

Learn maps and the best rounds to take on them.

Play tanks with a poor reverse speed. Since you have the conqueror, you’re familiar with Britain and you have plenty of tanks with poor reverse speed. This may sound counterintuitive, but it will force you to learn map positioning since you can’t just reverse out of where you are and if you go to a bad position or overextend you will die.

1 Like
15

All of that would work except the dreadful ghost shell and you are done once that happens.

16

Aggressive, supportive, or cautious. This still sums down to camping, moving only when you need to, or sticking with other people and assisting in repairing them or providing fire.