War Thunder's air realistic battles need to change

Note: this video is about making ARB more fun within a relatively short timeframe. Long term, a lot more would need to be changed about ARB; as I say in the video, the gamemode is plagued by a lot more issues than what I discussed. Ideally, I would love to see the return of a reworked ARB EC PvEvP gamemode with a great emphasis on multirole combat, paired with a 2nd gamemode that is just current ARB, but 8vs8 without any AI vehicles (so PvP only). However, this would require a full re-work of ARB; it would probably take quite a while until we'd receive such a rework. Until then, the solution I propose in this video would work as a band-aid fix to make ARB more enjoyable at top tier.

Meanwhile, me chilling in the middle of a large furball PSM spamming in Ace Combat

That's why I play only low/mid tier. Love my Spitfires and Bf-109's)

Too bad that we're all being almost forced into that same top tier, since it's the only tier that you cant wait for a few minutes to get a game and for the game to load, to take off and head into battle only to find out that you're uptierd enough that you cant do anything against the enemy, and thus you get killed frustrated and frustrated because it just isn't fair. If there were only a way to bring back korea tier with no missiles, just mig15 vs sabre, or the vietnam tier phantom vs mig21/19, there need to be tech ceilimg that cannot be crossed, and i would personally love it if these thematic events/battles were done in EC style, with the PVE anf everything, there is just so much potential with the great plane models and tech, with 0 execution, carriers are literally never used, why are the players never made to use the same carrier over and over again... so much potential wasted smh

In short, it can be said that realistic battles are adapted only to aircraft from the ww2 era or the early Vietnam War. On Realistic Battles playing with jets there is no point at all in bombing bases or doing targets in battles because ultimately the game turns into one big death match.

welcome to the gen 4.5 JETFIGHTER
this is how irl fight

Numbers have decreased in tge real world. A 16 v 16 battle between 4th gen jets is a major air battle in a major war now.

I actually agree with you alot and I was pondering the same ideas as you when I was playing this morning, I think the quickest way to implement this without JUST making the maps bigger would be to have 4 airfields, 2 on each team, spread to both 4 corners.
If you play air rb you'll notice literally every match starts the exact same way, everybody takes off and goes off to the left then your team kill whichever idiot decided to go right this time and then they all turn in eventually and meet the other team in the middle - this might spread it out more so half goes left, half goes right and then a few go middle, but this does present the danger of things like if one side loses the BVR drastically and then the team that won that side goes to help the other side theres no way that the team that took the hit could win that.

I would like larger maps with this layout but with increased rewards for attacking and defending ground targets, real sam sites and increased yield for air kills to balance out the time you spend in them, but we all know thats unlikely to happen. This larger map idea would also allow for gaijin to add more bomber-focused top tier aircraft, su25s which are basically pointless and useless rn could actually go and grind without being dogpiled, same with the a6 and a10s, later on if we have su34 (my dream jet) or larger strategic bombers (which i dont think would be good if added) we could also see them survive and maybe grind more if theres more space to get lost in.

I do like your idea of decreasing the lobby sizes, but, the reason content creators support this idea is because they all have all the missiles and upgrades unlocked, they play for "fun" while people who are playing a specific jet they just unlocked to grind and who dont have BVR missiles or good performance upgrades will basically end up quitting the game out of frustration, it'll boil down to whoever has the most BVR missiles and not the skill of the pilots. You can of course fly low and evade radar to counter this etc but when the lobby is decreased so drastically even flying low for half an hour to fly vertical at some guy who has been looking for you at 10,000m for half an hour will notice the weird little dot approaching from his rear, and end up expecting this over time.
Also decreasing lobby sizes will probably reduce income/xp/silver for players.

Ultimately, I think a mix of all these ideas could be best, basically, just add more "game modes".
Personally, I want the sim experience but with air RB controls for most of these too. The main issue will be friendly fire but hopefully they can add some proper IFF to the game.

Give us a toggle for having always EC maps in air RB!

Eow, I have little issue with IR missiles.......But I am using the F-14B, the R-27ERs on the other hand.....are extremely broken. the AIM-7 can't compete at all, their slower speed combine with US 70s era radar is no match for the Russian 90s era missiles and radar. Fun Fact, the F-22A production model had it's first flight in 1997....but the Mig-29SMT only flew in 1998.....and entered service in 2004.
Ground RB is more broken, T-80s and T-90s are immune to side shoots to the ammo cassette, 2012 Pantsir claiming to be able to fight the JSF, gets to shoot and 70s era US jets and 2022 2s38 which barely exist as a single prototype....is immune to TOW 2 and is at a BR lower than the CCVL.

Ah yes, “AIR RB need to change” proceeds to only talk about top tier

Every plane needs at least 5x more countermeasures. That may be a good first step.

10.0 is one of the best jet tiers imo

ARB above like 10.3 is just hard to have fun with. Personally id like to see top tier air RB be 8v8 or so, then have an EC style playlist with the arb ruleset with a larger player count

It’s like AC7 multiplayer but your wallet is stolen each time you die

👍

Who wants to bet next big update they’re just going to add Aim 120s and maybe the f18 and do nothing to change air RB?

Fly DCS. Stop hurting yourselves with wt.

This is why even though I have 12.3 jets my 10.3’s get played a lot more

As a Swede, I will put aside the slander of JAS39 Gripen for now, but the problem I have with the game overall is the top-tier meta. The missile gameplay is very boring and takes away the fun of the lower rank airbattles with dogfights and more active battles. And that is why I will stick to around BR 5-7 since that is about right before the missiles starts to become more prominent.

That's why SB is much more enjoyable. You have less players, you have 3 fields to spawn, and you have whole map to fly. Also fly models in SB much more accurate. The only downside is that chinese bots ruined all economy in SB and you can't grind there...

Warthunder itselves needs a complete change! From money milking greed back to enjoyable game, that deserves this name

The irony is that, low tier ARB (at like 5.0) you get 6 players per team because no one is playing

Brother, people have been saying 16v16 is way too much. Gaijin is ignoring us. I think they dont want to buy more servers or something. All the care is to make money. Untill people dont mass together again affecting their bottom line, they wont change much.

I would love to see a heli-pve type of deal come for tanks and aircraft as well. It would make me enjoy playing war thunder much more. I don't like pvp because it just peethes me off greatly. I like pve because it makes i don't accidentally tryhard too much and ruin other's people's fun or have my fun ruined because of a flank. It gets annoying fast then your armor feels like it a peice of TP that you can find in schools and stuff and have a cannon that seems to be the same effective velocity that is as powerful as a todler tossing a heavy potato. In serious terms, armor that feels increasable weak and a gun that feels bearly up to the task.

the best matches are when you and a few others survive past the furball of hell and its like 4v4 at the end.

Biggest issue I’ve come across having 4 nations top tier jet wise atleast, is that it’s not the player amount that’s necessarily the issue, you do bring up some massively good points but the match length being shortened to how it used to be and the fact that to actually achieve anything you need multiple kills so decreasing the number of players without increasing rewards would well be….. pointless.

To properly achieve a fun and fulfilling air rb game mode the matches would need to be longer, the rewards for bombing and kills increased, player count lowered and decompression of the brs at a minimum.

A simple solution would to be make air rb longer as they were but also make it so you have multiple life’s like ground rb allowing air rb to be more engrossing and rewarding for the match time you play.

Air RB is fine in low tier. I agree top tier RB sucks but low tier RB (rank 4 and below) is genuinely some of my favorite gameplay in the game.

Need an enduring confrontation/week long wars for air. like foxhole or how heroes and generals used to be. Large maps with lots of things goin on. ground forces to support and AI or strategic targets to target. So theres something for everyone. the fighters can fight. the Multi roles and do mixed things and the strikers can do strike missions.

let players choose how they want to play.

They do everything the cry babies want, even with that, still more thing that the snowflakes will ask

I started war thunder back in may I'm on tier 2 and I absolutely have no idea what everyone is talking about 😅

hard disagree, 50 v 50 ARB on EC maps with VALUABLE objectives to bomb.

Missile spam was the reason i stopped playing air rb as a whole in my final 2000h of wt, i seek dogfights.
So im not particularly fond of the kind of gameplay you get from pressing space bar twice

Your video pretty much is spot on about the flaws of air rb at top tier.
The way the game mode is designed as of now is inherently flawed from how i look at it.

To me its nothing more than a dopamine hit simulator, equivalent of a tiktok with subway surfers playing in the background as a second video.
I dont enjoy these short games.
They feel braindead to me. Because it probably is.

Fur balls have been my biggest issue with air rb as a whole for years now even back when missiles first released.

I 100% agree with your solution of decreasing the player density per match (ive had this thought for a long time already, as it would be the most ideal solution i think) Itll result in less fur balls and more proper games that dont end in 5m from engagement start, or so i hope and want to think at least.
If i wanted furballs id go play arcade ☠.

Simulator battles s o m e w h a t fix that, but thats not a solution to people with bad eyesight and people who have 1440p res or less, especially with how many copy paste jets exist.
Sadly sim on its own already has plenty of fundamental flaws.

They have really bigs maps but the last time I saw them used i was in pro planes. Where did those massive maps go? They they weren't just larger version of the original maps. They had missions like "intercept incoming bombers" and everything was in very different directions giving you many options as to how you would play the match tactically. I loved it

Ironically enough

I enjoy naval WAAAY more than air RB, you know, the place where the players can be counted by one hand?

Air RB is either climb for 5 minutes then get smacked by one bullets or spam missiles dumpfire

This is just my personal opinion, but I think it would be a good idea to make a special game mode just for these high VR jets as well as mixing them into a large ground battle setting. I also think it would be pretty cool to introduce the patriot missile system as a counter.

So, do u really think tarkov is fun?

just play DCS

Can't wait for 32v32 with a bunch of FOX 3's

HB was goated and 16v16 is ehhhh

they just need to add enduring confrontation for ARB.

Would you be doing a video anytime soon about how Air RB is effectively just a fighter death match where Attackers, Interceptors, Bombers, etc all do not matter anymore there unlike years of past and the map objectives themselves slowly becoming dumbed down, homogenized, and made to be redundant and not matter anymore gameplay wise.

I miss when submarine pens were targets, when regular or heavy pillboxes were more common in some maps, where bridges were targets that mattered or individual hangers on Korea were targets. Etc. This is a massive crime since this effectively kills off all types of vehicles besides air superiority fighters unless they are so under tiered that they can be used or exploited as fighters and the lack of diversity is what kills top tier for me too. Humiliating that even games like say Ace Combat Assault Horizon had a more healthy multiplayer ecosystem than WT and made B-1's, B-2's, F-117's, A-10's, Su-25's, etc play well amongst F-22's, Su-57's, and Typhoons gameplay wise. Gaijins afraid to even flirt with the idea of a Vulcan being in game and even had Gaijin writers do it as a joke on content creators.

EDIT: Oh I forgot.

Can you imagine how much actual objectives with more intelligent AI's can flesh out 8 vs 8 top tier Air RB (or Air RB in general) ? having a squad of helicopters attempt to make a landing to deploy troops (cap a point) escorted by gunships into a town while various battles and skirmishes happens all over the AO with AI's en route to intercept the helicopters to stop the landing with players able to change the impact of this conflict by taking down or defending said units and having things esculate with each objective that succeeds or fail. having it play almost like a PvE game with co-op and enemy players in the battle space allowing players to stock grind or play other vehicle classes while benefiting their team and certain objectives pushing or creating air defenses/ SAM's/ AA that can help control the map.

What's hilarious is that this update could have been totally cancelled and it would change practically nothing for me as well as a majority of the War Thunder player base. Most people don't even play top tier either because they already reached it and don't like playing top tier anymore or because they're a new player trying to grind away to top tier.

So unless you're part of that small no-lifer echelon that religiously commits themselves to top tier, they literally released basically nothing else, unless you count the crew voices and shitty windy grass effect that looks like a bad lighting bug.

control your plane and bullet dammit not your missile!

What me and some friends have been thinking about is more of making it like a game mode that makes you feel like your taking part in a large air campaing (like desert storm) where the games last longer (idk how long would be best) and letting people respawn and take airfields and advance the front of your lines making it like and enduring confrontation where you can actually take over AF's that are closer to the front as times goes on allowing people to play for longer and feel like those little efforts matter (example killing the bots and shooting down bot planes as well as covering your bots)
Id also like to see the ability to respawn with SL like in Sim so if one of your squad dies early he doesnt have to just wait like 20min or so to play again so people would also not be able to just run full afterburner the whole time and actually survey the map and attack targets of importance to winning over just how many things can I kill in the shortest ammount of time to get my next plane becuase focusing on the grind makes it feel much longer so being able to plan with your friends and work together and feel like your taking control of the skies in an area would be a lot of fun.

A missile isn't that big of a deal , but when you play something like the Tornado IDS WTD61 that has only 2, it's a real pain

had an interesting thought where instead of 8v8 do 6v6 and have 3 spawn quadrants for each team. spawn in pairs of 2 so you have localized engagements and then the survivors if any can gun it for the remaining enemies. not sure how interesting this would be or but it would result in either preliminary bvr engagements into say dogfights or close range missile engagements.

Naval needs a change too. When i wrote very detailed post on forum, it was just denied. Gaijin want to stay the same, just make everything bigger and stronger and moar. Very Russian approach indeed ;)

Remove enemy tags, force to use the radar with IFF etc