Its better than it was. At least with the base sunk into the ground, you mostly can’t get shot as soon as you spawn in now.
But now you spend/waste a lot of time driving back and forth to the new rim/ridges. I think it’s just going to take learning the new spots and it will be better (more winnable) & less frustrating.
really annoying the small dip on the north side of the base isn’t a safe spot anymore, you will get shot in the back by the south wave as it moves across and sometimes immediately from spawns on the flank
haven’t played it too much from the ground to experiment more, just been exploding M1s with Zunis in the meantime
its a pile of shit now
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It’s not a matter of taste but courtship. As it should have been obvious by now, the person that came up with this change is mentally challenged and part of an inclusivity program that lets mentally challenged kids have their take of a good map make it into live.
Kudos to Gaijin for inclusivity.
I wonder if it’s possible to actually do something about the not-very-random map selection in Ground Assault, especially since there are (at least for me) now two maps not worth playing because they were ruined by workovers: Sinai and Ardennes.
Five times Ardennes since 16:00 today (16:49 now), and each time I’m on crew lock for 9 minutes because I refuse to play this map after it was messed up.
In the not quite two years I’ve been playing, I never got Kursk, Mozdok or Japan five times in a row. But Maginot, Sinai, Ardennes, oh yes, especially on weekends. So please, somehow make the mechanism understand that I don’t quit immediately because I want the same map over and over and over. It’s because I do not want to play it.
I’m surprised to see this bit of knowledge evades veteran players but on the old Ardennes map, if you killed all the trees near base, you could camp behind the houses in base and have complete coverage around the map with minimal exposure. Makes the map ridiculously easy.
Bonus points for me as tree cleanup duty for the first 3 waves fed my autism too, lmao. I will miss shooting at every single tree at base on this map. In the new one, trees don’t matter much.
Or maybe, just maybe… let us spawn in the bowl. That never happened in the old map even though it should have.
You have to get there first.
After the bot planes bomb you, you ALWAYS spawn in front of a wave of bots = quick death. I called that the suicide spawn.
Well, I just gave Ardennes a try since it was the first map I got in the new patch. Apparently there have been more changes although I haven’t seen anything in the recent change logs.
The height changes have been partially altered, but to make things worse the earthworks are now higher than before. In a Panther F I can’t shoot over them, only through the small gaps, and the 8 o’clock bot spawn is elevated with a free field of fire behind the barricade.
Still unplayable.
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they actually made it worse than both the original, and updated version. this version is a nothing burgher version that just flattens the whole spawn, and removes all cover, previously you could use the bowl to get angles into the enemies, now? we’re back to the original death trap spawn point.
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haven’t come close to winning on this map since they changed it. Usually done by 4th wave , sometimes the 5th one.
Ground Assault bellow 8.3 BR is just too much of a hassle for me to bother. with anything 9.0+ you can just point and click. and besides most of the team is either 12.0 or a helicopter with ATGMs.
i dont advise playing Assault on low/mid tiers, unless you want to get Parts and FPE. or unlock usable shells.
Modding stock tanks is the only reason I play assault
I haven’t played any of my 8.3+ in about a year or so. One of your reasons to play 8.3+ is one of my reasons to avoid it: helicopters.
In my opinion helicopters are the worst addition to PvE. My goal when playing Ground Assault is twofold: one, having the team win for the huge bonus to RP and SL, and two, have a score of 1500+ because that’s where massive dimishing returns kick in. The reward difference between a score of 1500 and one of 5000 is small.
Now, with helicopters on the map I have to scoot around like greased lightning to get a few kills, and that under heavy exposure risk because if I take too long, some chopper joker has wiped out the pack I’m going for. They will also grab every equipment pickup they can, preferably those close to the base because flying to one further out is too much effort, so that’s making it even worse.
This is the moment when usually somebody pops up with the standard garbage such as “get gud”, “jelly much”, “L2P”, “skill issue”, without bothering to understand that I do not want to play helicopters or aircraft in general. I have absolutely no interest in flying anything, to the point of having unbound the aircraft selection keys. In short, helicopters on the map tend to ruin gameplay for the tank drivers. To make matters worse, some of those pilots are outright delusional, telling themselves that they “carry the game”.
Give me the option to play 8.3+ without helicopters, and I might find a way to accept my Leopard 2s all being awful ammo cripples. With helicopters, there’s no fun to be had.
all of what you said is perfectly understandable and agreeable. my only biggest gripe with assault under 9.0 is that nobody plays SPAA, so most games tend to be unbearable to be part of because CAS AI keeps nuking everyone. when i was unlocking modules for low tier Japan i went out of my way to grab the Duster Asap because relying on team mates to kill the AI CAS is torture.
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Oh, how well I know that particular pain. It’s why I leave after I got blown up by ignored bot aircraft for the second time, or if there are 5+ planes in the air, after the first. In Panthers I have been killed by as little as a single round from a Su-6 cannon at Kursk, sometimes two or three, myTiger 1 was exploded by cannon fire at Japan (still don’t know what was hit)…and the worst part is that I can’t hit bots on their first pass due to lack of barrel elevation.
Since I made a tiny mistake when making my Cat 6 preset, it doesn’t have AA. Tiger H and E, Panther D/A/G/F, all aced and maxed. So it’s either the team understands the correlation between being nuked by bot planes and respawning in front of a lot of bot tanks, or I’m out.
I’m also all far increasing the amount of points awarded for shooting down aircraft with an SPAA to 75 or 100, while decreasing those for shooting squishy light tanks (in Ground Assault only). It just sucks having somebody spawn an SPAA for score padding while they do nothing against the planes in the air.
Me side eyeing majority of zsu-57 players lol. The cas on ardennes can be exceptionally brutal, almost always have a spaa as backup in roster since the aforementioned and similar are usually trying to pop tanks instead…
That 6.7-8.0 bracket can be so unbearable that I will purposely put a 8.3+ vehicle and use it in the high tier where odds of winning are greater. Most top tier can still be dealt with or slowed using lower anyways. Now its not impossible to win, but the reliance on teammates knowing how to effectively slow down tanks if they cant outright drstroy them combined with lack of spaa coupled with ‘new’ folks in premiums they honestly have no business in yet, really depends on how much i can take lol.
As for the changes, I was not a fan initially… at least they are a bit more tolerable than say the Sinai ones have been… not much in my positions i utilize has adjusted for Ardennes, at the very least my odds of getting out of spawn are greater than the previous iteration.
The same rule applies to maneuver out of spawn as fast as possible for flanking positions (exception being Maginot Line and Japan) . I mostly head just slightly North with mbt types, there are a few hills you can stay in between, or if light/ifv types I either do same or go further North to where the town begins and get side shots on most, as well as if you semi watch minimap you can really tell if cas is heading towards you before they strike to try and take cover if possible.
Feels like they changed Ardennes once again. Thought they removed the suicide spawns but my last few battles there = instant death in front of the firing squad.
And there’s not even a safe-zone for spaa any more with the bowl removed. I don’t blame players for not wanting to use spaa there.
There have been so far undocumented changes after the “official” makeover - at least I haven’t seen anything in the patch notes - to Ardennes, such as the height from west to southeast. Also, the southeast fortifications are now so high that a Tiger or Panther can’t shoot over them, and the 9 o’clock spawn is elevated and has free fire into the entire base. Yes, that spawn can and will shoot anything behind these fortifications, and there is nowhere to go.
As undocumented changes go, since the bots on Maginot keep running into invisible walls when coming from the spawns (going clockwise from bottom left) 2, 4, 5, 6, and just stand on top of the ridge lines instead of swarming the base, this map has become quite winnable…if AA is present. This particular condition still stands.
Well, and there have been undocumented changes to the equipment pickups. They have changed behaviour three times now since the Tusk thingy patch started.
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