High BR Air AB matches almost dead. How to revive them?

[Pat_McGherkin 2,074]

On 18/07/2019 at 03:22, *sardinha08 said:

So how was today's official Thunder Stream: Arcade Jets?

 

They still do a Thunder Stream? That speaks volumes about the game and Gaijin as a company. I spend far too much of my life than is healthy playing this game and I didn't know they still do a stream. The Gaijin PR department is a joke. Kind of fitting I guess.

 

But how? People want to be famous....you only have to look at how many people join the squadrons ran by the youtubers, regardless of how good the youtubers are at playing the game or running a squadron. It's pseudo fame by association. There'd be more than enough volunteers for a one-off.

[NiAs 676]

On 06/07/2019 at 23:26, Elvis_Bombley said:

High BR Air Arcade suffers also because of the high cost associated with buying the planes, crewing them, and for newer jet players, the discouragement that comes from being seal clubbed by experienced jet players (aka VPO). At least lower the SL costs, or just let high tier AB die a slow death.

 

I myself find AB above BR 6.0 discouraging due to long queues all by itself.

 

Most of the members of the squadron you mentioned are pretty bad. I checked a lot of their profiles. But... 2-5 upgraded jets flown by average players that stick together still hurt single players in stock jets. It's a joke squadron members will be matched in one team without any platoon. Especially when it turns out to be 8 vs. 8 with 3-5 VPO in one team.

Edited July 11, 2020 by NiAs

[Kaedewulf 31]

Repair costs are an issue for me sometimes. I've never been a player that can save up 50 million. I spend so much on new vehicles and ammo that I'm almost always needing to take a "grind break" to grind SL through some boring memey method. My BF-109 K4 costs like 15k or more if I die in it, which is my favorite German non-jet plane to fly.

[bigredsnake@psn 76]

The high BR is too punishing SL wise, even if you're throwing money at the game I don't think you should ever make negative and certainly not 10K plus.  The issue is the jet game in a quasi to kinda sim game like WT is going to devolve into missile fights, which I'm fine with, but that's not what most fighter wannabe's want.  They want the WW2 turn fight at all levels which isn't really what happens beyond Vietnam. People like me will want to walk away because then why play WT over Ace Combat? ATA missiles only sucked for a little while they got plenty deadly by the late 70s.  

 

And how do you do bombers? The B-52 isn't going to outrun anything but if you don't do the B-52 how can you call yourself "THE" one stop shop military vehicle combat game? 

 

I'm not anti pay, it keeps WT going, and anyone who's ever bought premiums anything knows there's nothing out there that's pay to win.  However be it Ground, Fleet, or Air the high level is SL punishing for loses.  You lose a BR 3 even to 6 you don't get punished for getting the crap kicked out of you.  Get that Leopard, Pensacola, or F-4 destroyed? Get ready to pay.  This clearly wasn't what the developers intended because outside of Fleet the battles don't get better.  The MDT battles are less interesting than the WW2 battles because the tanks can almost all one shot each other, the optics are amazing, the armor is crap, and the maps are too small for a typical engagement in real life. 

 

 Air....again should turn into a ugly missile fight with little to no dog-fighting anything else is pandering.  Even in AB right now a dogfight in a jet is like watching two B-17 get on each others tail just at Mach 1-2.   In real life countermeasures aren't as effective as they let on until recently. 

 

 At least Fleet you're finally getting what you began to play Fleet for...big ships slugging it out but even there it takes an Ace'ed out crew realistically long to get on target. Most kills are from spam torps or fighter bombers.  

 

I think the first step is backing the economic punishment off.  You want to make money then sell premium jets with different skins so people can skip to what they want.  Second would be to fix the bomber game so it works otherwise it's just a fighter game with bombers there I guess to make you feel like they could be used.  Lastly....I can't get over my plane stats from when the game started.  I still have nothing that has made SL or RP like back then, I feel making matches worth it so grinds aren't as long would be good so the broke asses aren't trying to mind a million new ways to ruin the game.  

 

I think there's reason for hope though, if Hell Let Loose can figure out everything Battlefield ruined and fix it then WT still has a shot.  We're a niche community of gamers because even our arcade mode would be considered hardcore to most.  Flying sims haven't dominated PC games since the 90s;  in other words you average Minecraft, COD, Fortnite, EA sports type gamer isn't coming over even if this became more Ace Combat like. 

 

To me WT is still the only good choice.  DCS is pretty and no one really plays it because of its price, IL2 players can lock you out of a game if you're not using a joystick, WoW/WoT/WoWP....COD level tripe.  Warhammer in WW2? "High school fleet"? No thanks Grandpa didn't fight Tojo and the Nazies for that level of dumbassery. Why does Chieftain even make these hardcore tank videos for them?  It'd be like having R. Lee Emery make high quality gun porn videos with Gun Jesus for COD, it's cool but it reminds me that game has almost nothing to do with the video.  

[willcliff 116]

To balance arcade jets they should limit teams to ten and make maps at least 3x bigger. Even then i doubt top tier ab will ever be balanced

[DerLachendeMann 506]

With operation SUMMER I do try to play some jets, french at 9.0. 3 Vautours get you 10 tons of base damage rather quickly.

[RCAF_Canuck 121]

Just hope Gaijin listen and acts on it. I enjoy playing jets and want to continue!

[netarzan526 10]

The problems i have with top tier jet is as follows:

A) Maps are too small. It's annoying if in the first 15-30sec you have an enemy f104 or lighting at your base

B) Spawncamping. Speeks for itself

C) Too big difference between stock and aced jet planes. And it takes a lot of time to grind for it. But grinding is getting even more difficult if you have to wait 5 min for a match 5vs5... kind of demoralizing

D) Flight model. Jet planes flight like a cow (except me163/ki200 = UFO). People are used too long for a flight model of bf109 and then they have to switch to a jet... Can be frustrating  

 

 

[Lexing_ 241]

5 hours ago, netarzan526 said:

The problems i have with top tier jet is as follows:

A) Maps are too small. It's annoying if in the first 15-30sec you have an enemy f104 or lighting at your base

B) Spawncamping. Speeks for itself

C) Too big difference between stock and aced jet planes. And it takes a lot of time to grind for it. But grinding is getting even more difficult if you have to wait 5 min for a match 5vs5... kind of demoralizing

D) Flight model. Jet planes flight like a cow (except me163/ki200 = UFO). People are used too long for a flight model of bf109 and then they have to switch to a jet... Can be frustrating  

 

 

Ehhhh

A) Maps are indeed too small, yes. It takes me about half a minute to get to the main fight

B) Spawncamping isn't exactly possible in jets cause everything is moving so fast. Unless Gaijin scales up the maps it wouldn't really be a problem

C) That is true, but the better ways to grind jets is to play RB or Sim, not arcade

D) Yes jets turn like fat cows in ballet shoes, but in jets turning isn't that important anyways because at that tier turning becomes so spread out that once a player realize he is losing the fight he can just run for the deck.

[netarzan526 10]

22 hours ago, ____Lexing____ said:

Ehhhh

A) Maps are indeed too small, yes. It takes me about half a minute to get to the main fight

B) Spawncamping isn't exactly possible in jets cause everything is moving so fast. Unless Gaijin scales up the maps it wouldn't really be a problem

C) That is true, but the better ways to grind jets is to play RB or Sim, not arcade

D) Yes jets turn like fat cows in ballet shoes, but in jets turning isn't that important anyways because at that tier turning becomes so spread out that once a player realize he is losing the fight he can just run for the deck.

 

About RB and Sim is an interesting tip. I'm going to give it a try, but I was never a fan of it and especially fan of those repair costs in RB 

[Lexing_ 241]

3 hours ago, netarzan526 said:

 

About RB and Sim is an interesting tip. I'm going to give it a try, but I was never a fan of it and especially fan of those repair costs in RB 

Most of them aren't actually too bad (granted I have well over 20 million lions). A reasonable repair cost is somewhere around 6-10k in RB

 

But then you have the F11 that costs 35k for whatever reason

[panzerknoef 695]

A nice start would be a rework of jet BRs... I feel like a lot of them need tweaking. 

Yes F-104, I'm looking at you. 

 

Also would be nice if there was an actual separation between 9.7 and 10.3 like in realistic. Fighting phantoms in a 9.0 jet just isn't doable

Edited September 4, 2020 by panzerknoef

[RCAF_Canuck 121]

We can rant all we want, if Gaijin can't even acknowledge a problem we are pouched.

[Crome 78]

I hadn't the time to read every comment so I throw out my point of view.

Repair costs.

Stupid game modes like Airfield domination(if such a match start I leave the battle early, even with a 300% booster I don't want to do something that is no fun, War Thunder burned me out).

Missiles. I am not completely against them(Aim 9B is fine), the issue is, if you look at the logical development of better and better missiles you will come to todays missiles. Which means under the current game conditions planes would become somewhat obsolete because high Br. becomes just a "fire and forget" feces show. 

The Assault mode alone is boring and I get a lot gaijined there(collisions with invisible walls/plane crashes mid air with something, or sniper gunners kill two pilots at once, plane burned out with no fire,...) .

So the lack of fun due excessive missile use, the lack of fun game modes and the view on the future of high Br. technology tells me it is better just to forget about high br planes.

( I already have F-4, T-2,...)   

 

It is a bit like with ground forces "Realistic"Battles, high Br. is CAS Practice mode (already fun break at lower Br.) balance is out the window for a long time thus there is no reason for me to play it above 6.3( it has no future for me).

What you may notice if you are interested in the content of the Video is that lots of missile kills happened for the "target" out of the blue and with no realistic chance to avoid.

[MaryJaneMinded@psn 10]

My two cents would be to increase map size as it takes 10 seconds to reach enemy spawn and remove the afterburner cooldown and make them work like they are supposed to

[Jet_Leno 42]

Agree, most maps are TINY. You spawn in and you're head-on with someone in 10 seconds. 

Edited November 19, 2020 by Jet_Leno

[Kosher_Locust 120]

My input:

 

Most of the maps are too small for hyper props, to say nothing of jets.

 

The thing to decide is if it's the long wait times or mismatching of battle ratings is the problem.  Having a prop face off against five F-89's (I've had that happen) isn't much fun.  It also depends on the nation, Americans, Russians, and Brits dominate.  The Germans are in the awkward position they didn't have an Air Force for 11 years.  I was wonder why they had all these Me-262's until I found out the top tier ones use rocket boosters and it was "oooooooooh......."

 

Finding a battle rating that doesn't get uptiered as much is important, as is having as many of your planes as feasible at or near the same BR.  Everyone has seen the guy who gets a plane like a P-80 thinking he'll use it in the same matches but instead gets creamed and loses his plane so his next one is a P-26.

 

I've found up to 6 is largely props, 6.3 is props and some jets, F-84 is the baddie but only some F-89's.  6.7 is jets dominating over props, and 7 on up needs better and better jets.  Lately I started playing at 8.0, but has waited until I had about six that were 7 or higher and 2 at 8, and so far it's been a good run.

 

Jets on props seem to do well with surprise, and the really good players use altitude to surprise from above.  However a prop only need to turn out of the way, and jets in general have very short windows to aim and fire.  Props after jets is waiting for the bad guy to get in range and then in sights, and the bigger the gulf in battle rating the more frustration.  Jets on jets evens out and the closing distances and speed, while faster than props, is easier to manage.

[bearteeth 139]

The sense I get is that 6.0-8.0 is unplayable because it's full of F-89s, while 8.0+ is unplayable because of missiles. My solution is to be the guy in the F-89, queueing at 7.0 so as to avoid most of the missiles. This is a perfect solution for me, personally, because I paid money to have the one good jet that doesn't contend with heat-seekers.

 

Seems totally fair from my completely unbiased perspective.