I’m gonna be honest, I’m not at all happy about the slow yet steady inclusion of APHE for older vehicles that didn’t have them up until recently, not in its current state atleast. It’s because it’s starting to feel like an excuse to not have to touch the damage model of APHE anymore by giving more and more low or mid tier vehicle APHE wherever possible. The issue should be incredibly obvious by the very fact that said vehicles required uptiering after getting their respective shells.
This is not what we were promised. Not only did they only add the proposed buffs, but none of the nerfs, Gaijin told us that they will eventually return to this issue, but we had radio silence for atleast 2 years already, we slowly start getting APHEs for non-APHE vehicles and people stopped talking about APHE balance simply, because it’s like screaming at a wall. What was even the point of asking the community on such an important game balance matter when most people didn’t even think in long-term balance and/or only cared about whether or not their favorite vehicle can still steamroll others the same way? Alot of people didn’t even understood that they were voting only for a test.
Gaijin didn’t give up, the community ruined it. Low information/ignorant PLAYERS threw a tantrum about a TEST of updated APHE mechanics. The playerbase is to blame for that episode.
Now, should Gaijin have just done the test without a “vote”? Sure, I think they should have. “The majority” is often dumb, irl and in games. But what happened happened. And here we are, with 10+ year old APHE mechanics because of the players.
It’s because the community will always vote to lower the skill floor.
Nerfing aphe meant that a now one would need to learn actual position of ammo racks or gunners/commanders or basic strategy like "Don’t meet the T-95 face to face in an open field "
It’s funny because you could have chained to Spall Fragments Bouncing Internally on all shells too, so even shells like hesh or heat would be buffed.
And in some very rare cases even buff aphe vehicles, stuff like L3/33 CC, Csaba, Ha-Go and simply more low pen and filler aphe users Would see some improvements because the spall would be a lot more concentrated and would have made killing of crew more easy and reliable.
But tbh, a realistic implementation of aphe would change the low tier dynamic so much that i don’t trust Gaijin one bit to re-balance entire tech trees properly after, they would most likely ruin low-tiers for good, so i think we got the best outcome we could have from that debacle.
But then those same people scream bloody murder about 30-40mm APHE autocannon SPAAG butchering them, despite them quite literally voting for the underlying mechanic behind such.
The only way to begin healing the game is for the devs to put their foot down and say “we tried working with you, you never stop complaining, so we will proceed to ignore your cries on this and related issues from here onward, while reversing course out of spite. If we appease you any longer different tanks lose their unique flavor entirely.”
APCR should be devastating with an up to 45-degree lethal spall cone, APDS should be pretty similar or possibly nastier, HEAT should at minimum have equally destructive spall cones if not outright overpressure-kill anything it penetrates at 84mm size or larger, HESH should create a massive shrapnel cone and not care about thin spaced plates because its still a solid-enough round, and big HE should have enough kinetic hammering effect to cave in most heavy tanks where it currently goes “poof” like a cotton wad.
In other words - all ammunition types should be devastating for the most part. The game should be “don’t get penetrated” and not “eat nonlethal shots repeatedly with empty space.”
They tested the new APHE mechanics on the Dance Of Dragons DEV server anyway.
This was done via protection analysis and event-mode with the new characteristics applied.
And the results go exactly in line with what was to be expected; none of the “issues” (cupola sniping for instance, even though I strongly disagree on this being an issue in the first place) were fully resolved and yet the only noticeable change was a reduced consistency in shell-damage.
People for some reason now make out the APHE fragmentation-distribution rework (because that’s literally all that it is) as some ‘do-all’/‘fix-all’ solution for whatever aphe-related topic there is.
Be it someone literally dying due to having a gaping hole in their damage-model, be it penetration-bugs that are unrelated to aphe itself, or whichever 30-35mm spaa killed them last.
Somehow a rework that solves none of these issues is being propagated as a direct solution to them when it simply isnt.
But hey, let’s ask for the consistent shell to get its’ post-penetration damage nerfed so we can have another shell-type to complain about.
There was a community post with a vote to test realistic APHE but certain youtubers and players who dont want to learn to aim voted no en masse.
anyways cupola cheese shots and 35mm SPAA is meta and will stay that way until they fix this issue.
it was never a fix all, despite what some may think but it would significantly improve the situation.
the only consistent thing about APHE is its extreme overperformance completely overmatching gaijin damage wonkiness. even on notably weak APHE where the wonky variance of damage is still very evident it still causes absolute havok that it shouldnt. Good evidence 2pdr APHE,even tho its like 20g of HE filler it will tear the insides of most tanks up better than 57mm solid shot can.
a more notable comparison is the 90mm APHE from a pershing, it in reality took 2-3 side shots to knock out a whole panther crew. in WT a single shell is enough to turn the thing into nothing but a pile of ash.
No, the community did not throw a tantrum. I for one voted for keeping APHE the way it is. It’s very simple for me: every single time they add/change a mechanic it becomes so bugged and so frustrating that no matter what good thing it brought to the game is COMPLETELY overshadowed by the downsides. I mean come on, it’s gaijin, and you want them to change one of the most elementary mechanics of the game? What could go wrong am I right! Just take volumetric as an example if you want.
They tested it on the dev server, despite the vote results.
Also over half of the playerbase parttaking in this vote was against it, introducing such change for the sake of a vocal few that dont even understand the implied changes half the time to upset the larger part of the playerbase isnt what they’ll go for.
Also idk what kind of memory-loss y’all are eperiencing but the last time gaijin touched anything related to Aphe, we got several bugs (some still unfixed) where it ignores armour outright.
Rebalancing all of low-tier when vehicles are now incapable of relying on their usual (and sometimes only) shots due to further reduced consistency will for sure go well, i mean when was the last time gaijin made questionable BR-changes, that never happens!(KTP to 6.3)
Except it literally was.
They announced 3 parts for this rework, 2/3 were implemented without player-vote, which were;
Keep shell integrity after penetrating solid modules (such as enginey)
Increase APHE fragmentation damage to solid-shot levels.
Solely the fragmentation distribution was not added based on the feedback.
Regardless of whether they were to oversimplify the distribution (see: russian aphe diagram from devblog) or use more realistic diagrams (perhaps for individual shells uniquely even), the ability to cupola-snipe or one-shot people outright would not be removed, it’d solely become less consistent.
There are a few reasons for this, one of which being how aphe often fuzes upon striking a “backplate” or certain modules (ammo being one example but there are other moduels that I cba to list), even when the fuze-delay distance has not been covered.
But again, thats not something this rework ever addressed, it wouldnt be resolved.
Even with the oversimplified distribution, the shell fuzing right above your crew still has the same or similar (again, less consistency) effect.
Do you have any source proving that this pershing fired M82 APC-T at the panther?
Also keep in mind that there is more stuff inside the tank irl than gaijin models, comparing a irl tank engagement with warthunder here doesnt quite seem like a good comparison, especially when you consider that irl crews would keep shooting until the target is visibly destroyed, they dont wait for the splash-text to appear…
And please can you tell how many of “tests” were changed or not implemented based on player feedback? This argument feels “dev server is WIP bro your issue will definitely be changed later bro”
